Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia of the United States in central North America. [1][2] The term excludes the only two non- contiguous states, which are Alaska and Hawaii (they are also the last two states to be admitted to the Union ...
The term "United States," when used in the geographic sense, refers to the contiguous United States (sometimes referred to as the Lower 48, including the District of Columbia not as a state), Alaska, Hawaii, the five insular territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and minor outlying possessions. [1]
The first documented use of the phrase "United States of America" is a letter from January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort.
The Continental Divide in North America in red and other drainage divides in North America The Continental Divide in Central America and South America. The Continental Divide of the Americas (also known as the Great Divide, the Western Divide or simply the Continental Divide; Spanish: Divisoria continental de América, Gran Divisoria) is the principal, and largely mountainous, hydrological ...
Geology of the United States. Shaded relief map of the United States, showing 10 geological provinces. The richly textured landscape of the United States is a product of the dueling forces of plate tectonics, weathering and erosion. Over the 4.5 billion-year history of the Earth, tectonic upheavals and colliding plates have raised great ...
The United States of America was formed after thirteen British colonies in North America declared independence from the British Empire on July 4, 1776. In the Lee Resolution, passed by the Second Continental Congress two days prior, the colonies resolved that they were free and independent states.
U.S. territorial sovereignty. In the United States, a territory is any extent of region under the sovereign jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States, [1] including all waters (around islands or continental tracts). The United States asserts sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving, and managing its territory. [2]
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is one of the four census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term the West changed.