United States of America (abbreviation: US or USA)

9,629,091 sq km

272.6 million ( until July 1999)

Washington, DC

white 83.5%, black 12.4%, Asian 3.3%, Amerindian 0.8% ( until 1992)

English, Spanish (spoken by a sizable minority)

120 V, 60 Hz

Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10% (1989)

federal republic (strong democratic tradition)

George W. Bush

137.7 million (includes unemployed) (1998) (managerial and professional 29.6%, technical, sales and administrative support 29.3%, services 13.6%, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and crafts 24.8%, farming, forestry, and fishing 2.7% (1998)

US Dollar

Most brands of traveller's cheques and main foreign currency can be easily exchanged at airport and banks in the major cities. Hotels and banks offer the most variable exchange rates. Credit cards widely accepted in USA include American Express, Visa, MasterCard, and Diners Club. Travelers can get cash advances from credit cards on many of the automated teller machines (ATM).

vast central plain, mountains in west, hills and low mountains in east; rugged mountains and broad river valleys in Alaska; rugged, volcanic topography in Hawaii

Extending as far south as the northern Great Lakes states and including the interior to the Canadian border, as well as parts of Alaska, the Northlands remains sparsely settled. The inhospitable nature of the physical environment plus the consequent thinness of settlement give the Northlands its special character.

America's eastern seaboard reveals a lack of large cities along the coast north of Boston. Few major overland routes extend inland from this coast, and interior cities are generally smaller than those along the ocean. This area, comprising northern New England and the Adirondacks of New York, can be referred to as the Bypassed East.

The southern margins of the United States can be divided into two approximately equal sections. One half, the Southwest Border Area, shares a long land boundary with Mexico and includes an extensive inland area that has experienced many influences from that country. The other half, which we discuss here, traces the coastline eastward from the mouth of the Rio Grande River in Texas to North Carolina and includes the Florida peninsula. Both stretches are southerly in latitude, and they share a small area of overlap in southern Texas, but the Southern Coastlands is as distinct from the Southwest Border Area as are any other two adjacent regions in America. The Southern Coastlands is distinctive for two primary reasons. First, it has a humid, subtropical environment. The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico also contribute a strong maritime influence to the coastlands' climate. The region has a clear appeal to visitors and potential residents, and its agriculture is distinctive because of this environment.

California has been an important destination for U.S. internal migration in nearly every decade since 1850. By most of the criteria used in the definition of regions, California is not a single unit. The agricultural population of the Imperial Valley in the southeast is quite different from the urban population of San Francisco. The striking flatness of the San Joaquin Valley is in sharp contrast to the ruggedness of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. There are broad areas of desert in the southern interior and heavily forested slopes along the coastal north. The lowest and highest elevations in the conterminous United States, Death Valley and Mount Whitney, respectively, are almost within sight of each other.