Lecture #6 Geography

The vast and varied expanse of the United States of America stretches from the heavily industrialized, metropolitan Atlantic seaboard, across the rich flat farms of the central plains, over the majestic Rocky Mountains to the fertile, densely populated west coast, then halfway across the Pacific to the semi-tropical island-state of Hawaii. Without Hawaii and Alaska the continental U.S. measures 4,505 kilometers from its Atlantic to pacific coasts, 2,754 kilometers from Canada to Mexico; it covers 9,372,614 square kilometers (in area, it is the fourth largest nation in the world).

The sparsely settled far-northern state of Alaska, is the largest of America’s 50 states with a land mass of 1,477,887 square kilometers. Alaska is nearly 400 times the size of Rhode Island, which is the smallest state; but Alaska, with 521,000 people, has half the population of Rhode Island.

Airlines service 817 cities throughout the country. A flight from New York to San Francisco takes five-and-a-half hours. Train service is also available: the most frequent service is between Washington, D.C., New York and Boston in the East; St. Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee in the Midwest; and San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the West. A coast-to-coast trip by train takes three days. The major means of intercity transportation is by automobile. Motorists can travel over an interstate highway system of 88,641 kilometers, which feeds into another 6,356,590 kilometers of roads and highways connecting virtually every city and town in the United States. A trip by automobile from coast to coast takes five to six days.

America is a land of physical contrasts, including the water. The southern parts of Florida, Texas, California, and the entire state of Hawaii, have warm temperatures year round; most of the United States is in the temperature zone, with four distinct seasons and varying numbers of hot and cold days each season, while the northern tier of states and Alaska have extremely cold winters. The land varies from heavy forests covering 2,104 million hectares, to barren deserts, from high peak mountains (McKinley in Alaska rises to 6193, 5 meters), to deep canyons (Death Valley in California is 1,064 meters below sea level).

Population Trends

America has long been known as an ethnic “melting pot”. Its current population is 252, 5 million made up of immigrants or their descendants from virtually every country in the world. It is believed that the first people to arrive from Siberia, more than 10.000 years ago were the Native Americans or the American Indians. Today nearly 1.5 million American Indians and Eskimos live in the United States, many on tribal lands set aside for them in 31 states.

Europe the major source of US immigration began sending colonists to America in the early 17^th century, primarily from Northern and Western Europe. Immigration peaked in the period from 1880 to 1920, when tens of millions of immigrants entered the United States, with the largest percentage during that period coming from Southern and Eastern Europe. Black Americans, who today number 30.79 million, constitute the largest single ethnic minority in the country. They were first brought to the New World as slaves in the 17^th, 18^th and early 19^th centuries. In the 20^th century large numbers of blacks, who historically lived in the South, migrated to the large industrial cities of the North in search of jobs and a better way of life. Hispanics, who number 20.5 million and live primarily in the South-west, are the next largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Sixty percent are Mexican-Americans with the remainder from Central and South America. The Hispanic community is extremely varied, and includes large Puerto Rican populations in many Eastern cities as well as a growing Cuban-American presence in Miami, Florida. The United State’s population has also absorbed nearly 6.5 million Asians (from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Laos, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Cambodia and Thailand). Many Asian Americans live in Hawaii, where more than two-thirds of the population claims an Asian or Polynesian heritage.