Geography

The Empire State Building in New York City is not the tallest building in the United States. The Sears Tower, in Chicago, Illinois, is the tallest, at 1,450 feet (442 m), with 110 floors. At the time of its completion in 1974, the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world, and it held … Read more

Connecticut is often called the Insurance State because it is the headquarters for more than 100 insurance companies. In the 1790s companies there began insuring ships and cargo that left its ports. These companies prospered, and by 1810 people could buy insurance that would cover them for “loss of life or personal injury while journeying … Read more

A person from Connecticut is called a “Connecticuter,” says Webster’s New International Dictionary, although there is no official state term to describe a person who was born in or lives in Connecticut. In the 1700s two other words were seen in print: “Connecticotian” and “Connecticutensian.” At one time, “Nutmegger” was used to refer to a … Read more

New York is called the Empire State not because of the Empire State Building, the state had its nickname long before 1931, when that famous skyscraper was built. No one knows for sure how New York got the nickname, but some historians think the name can be traced to George Washington, who once said the … Read more

New York was the capital of the United States between 1785 and 1790. George Washington was sworn in as the first president there in 1789. In 1790 Congress agreed, as part of a compromise between northern and southern leaders, to locate a permanent capital along the banks of the Potomac River. In the meantime, the … Read more

California leads the list of states that use the most water, using almost 11 percent of the freshwater in the United States. Most of this water is used to irrigate crops. Next are Texas, Illinois, and Idaho, which together use about 28 percent. Water is necessary for most life on Earth. Humans can survive for … Read more

Most of the water in the United States is put to industrial uses, including power generation. Almost as much water, about 40 percent, is used for irrigation, particularly in states like California, Texas, and Nebraska. Only 12 percent of water is used by households and businesses. In many parts of the world, some people have … Read more

Less than 1 percent of the electricity in the United States comes from harnessing power from natural steam sources below the Earth’s surface. The United States led the world in geothermal electricity production in 2010 with 3,086 MW of installed capacity from 77 power plants. Geothermal power requires no fuel, and is therefore immune to … Read more

Each person in the United States uses from 80 to 200 gallons (303 to 757 liters) of water a day. Most of that is used to flush toilets. About 70% of the freshwater in the world is consumed by agriculture. Water is used as a solvent in manufacturing and plays an important role in the … Read more

Wind turbines that are used to generate electricity come in many shapes and sizes. The largest turbine, in Hawaii, is 20 stories high and has propellers with a span longer than a football field. It can produce enough electricity to power 1,400 homes. Smaller machines have blades between 8 and 25 feet (2.4 and 7.6 … Read more

A small peninsula near the town of Lubec, Maine, called West Quoddy Head, lies the farthest east of the conterminous 48 U.S. states. West Quoddy Head overlooks Quoddy Narrows, a strait between Canada and the United States, and is the closest point to Africa from a point in the fifty States. But the U.S. Virgin … Read more

No one knows for sure why people from New England called Yankees. Some think “Yankee” may have been derived from Janke, the Dutch nickname for Jan, meaning “John” in English. Janke was considered to be an insulting name during the 1600s. By the mid-1700s, the British were using the word to refer to New Englanders … Read more

New England consists of six states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Captain John Smith named the region New England while exploring the northeastern coast in 1614. In 1686 the English government formed a province they also called New England that consisted of the colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts (which then included … Read more

Some people who work in Massachusetts like to live across the border in New Hampshire because New Hampshire does not have a general sales tax or a state income tax on individual earned income. The state does levy other kinds of taxes, but even so, it has the third lowest overall taxes of all the … Read more

Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, is the highest peak in New England, at 6,288 feet (1,917 m). It is part of the Presidential Range, which has mountains named for Presidents Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison. New Hampshire’s mountain areas include five monadnocks, which are mountains or hills that sit alone on a flat plain because … Read more

Maine was a part of Massachusetts for almost 200 years. In 1820 it broke away and became the twenty third state. For much of its early history, in the 1600s and 1700s, Maine was claimed by both the French and the British. The British finally took it at the end of the French and Indian … Read more

All six New England states lie along the Atlantic coastline except Vermont. However, Vermont’s west and east borders are mainly water, Lake Champlain forms a good part of its western border with New York, and the Connecticut River forms Vermont’s entire eastern border with New Hampshire. Vermont is the most rural of all the states. … Read more

New Hampshire, like several other New England states, contains large deposits of granite, a very hard and durable igneous rock used as building material. It was once a major supplier of granite to other states, and several granite quarries continue to operate there. New Hampshire has just 13 miles (21 km) of coastline on the … Read more

The first federal highway had several names: the National Road, the Cumberland Road, and the National Pike. It was begun in 1811 in Cumberland, Maryland, and by 1841 it ran almost 800 miles, to Vandalia, Illinois. This road was important because it provided a route over the Allegheny Mountains and linked the Potomac and Ohio … Read more

The green or white signs with numbers that are placed along interstate highways are mile markers. They give travelers a way to determine where they are along a route. The mile marker shows the number of miles from where the interstate route entered the state you are in. For north–south highways, the numbering begins at … Read more

Atlanta, Georgia, has the busiest airport in the United States, no matter how you measure it, either by number of passengers getting on or off a plane, or by the number of takeoffs and landings. Passengers who are just passing through don’t count Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport comes in second, followed by the Los Angeles … Read more

Cumberland Road does not pass through the Cumberland Gap. The Cumberland Gap is near the place where Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee meet. It’s a natural cut in the Cumberland Mountains that was formed millions of years ago by water cutting through the Cumberland Plateau. In 1775, Daniel Boone blazed the Wilderness Trail, which runs through … Read more

The United States has lots of fish farms, in fact, every state in the nation has at least a few fish farms. Salmon is raised in the waters off Maine and Alaska. Arkansas and Mississippi, in particular, have many large catfish farms. Idaho’s trout farms produce 80 percent of the world’s farm raised trout. Louisiana, … Read more

California leads the country in agricultural production, followed in order by Texas, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. North Dakota produces the most wheat, followed by Kansas. Iowa produces the most corn, followed by Illinois and Nebraska. Texas produces the most cotton, followed by California and Mississippi. Texas produces the most cattle, followed by Kansas and Nebraska. … Read more

Wind power is used to generate electricity mostly in the western part of the United States. The federal government has set a goal to use wind power to produce at least 5 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2020. Large-scale wind farms are operating in California, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Oregon, and several … Read more

Wyoming, West Virginia, and Kentucky produce most of the coal in the United States. Natural gas comes mainly from Texas, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Oklahoma as well as from federal offshore sites in the Gulf of Mexico. There are huge reserves of natural gas in Arkansas and Oklahoma. More than half of U.S. electricity is … Read more

Gold is still mined in the United States, in fact, the United States is a major source of gold, second in the world after South Africa. Most gold comes from mines in Alaska and a few other western states such as the state of Nevada which has open-pit heap leach mines. Most U.S. gold comes … Read more

Places that have an average annual wind speed of at least 13 miles (21 km) per hour are best for producing wind energy. These can be found along the East Coast, the Appalachian Mountains, the Great Plains, the Pacific Northwest, and a few other locations in the United States. North Dakota is a prime location … Read more

Statistically speaking, it is safer to drive on interstate highways than on other kinds of roads in the United States. The fatality rate on interstates is 50 percent lower, and the injury rate is 70 percent lower. Interstates were designed with safety in mind. There are no intersections and no railroad crossings, curves are engineered … Read more

From the west, the Central Pacific Railroad began building track in Sacramento, California. From the east, the Union Pacific began construction in Omaha, Nebraska. Railroads running from the East Coast to Omaha had already been built. It took about six years of backbreaking labor until the two tracks met at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869. … Read more

The longest bridge in the United States is also the longest over-water bridge in the world: the 24-mile (38-km) long Lake Pontchartrain Causeway near New Orleans, Louisiana. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York City is the longest suspension bridge in the United States, with a span of 4,260 feet (1,298 m). Close behind is … Read more

You can tell whether an interstate highway runs north–south or east–west by its one or two digit number. Odd-numbered interstates run north–south, and the numbers increase as you travel from the West Coast (I-5) to the East coast (1-95). Even-numbered interstates run east–west, and the numbers increase as you go from south (I-10) to north … Read more

In the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw the need for the United States to have sufficient evacuation routes for both military vehicles and private citizens in the event of a war with the Soviet Union. He had seen the German autobahn system during World War II and pushed Congress to pass legislation that would … Read more

Alaska has the most coastline, but Michigan, not Florida or California, as you might think, comes in second, because of its 3,288 mile (5,290-km) shoreline along the Great Lakes. More than half of the people in the United States live within 50 miles (80 km) of a coastline. Alaska is the largest state in the … Read more

Most metropolitan areas in the United States that have been losing people are in the North or East. The areas shrinking fastest in the 1990s were Utica-Rome, New York; Binghamton, New York; Steubenville-Weirton, Ohio-West Virginia; and Grand Forks, North Dakota-Minnesota. A metropolitan area is also sometimes known as a commuter belt or a labor market … Read more

Urban sprawl refers to the spread of suburban housing developments that extend far beyond the city where most people work. When an urban area spreads, traffic problems increase and the city’s downtown area begins to decay, as shops and restaurants move to the suburbs. The Sierra Club says that Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix … Read more

An edge city is a booming suburban area that has sprung up since the 1970s, usually near a major highway. It contains many large office buildings and shopping centers but not very many homes and apartments. An example of an edge city is Tysons Corner, Virginia, next to the Capital Beltway (I-495) a few miles … Read more

A town is often defined as having between 2,500 and 20,000 residents, but there are no strict guidelines. Historically, in Europe, a city was understood to be an urban settlement with a cathedral. The word “town” comes from the Old Norse word “tun” which means “a grassy place between farmhouses”. The most common name for … Read more

The word Megalopolis originally referred to the largely urban East Coast area that spreads from Boston to Washington, D.C. But now it means any multicity urban area of more that 10 million people. The term Megalopolis was used by Lewis Mumford in his 1938 book, The Culture of Cities, which described it as the first … Read more

Utah tops the list, with a third of the total population under age 18, followed by Alaska and New Mexico. West Virginia has the fewest, where only one of every five people is under age 18. About 70 percent of the people who live in Utah are Mormons, who tend to have large families.

If you want to avoid earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, and volcanoes, don’t live in California, according to geographer Mark Mercer. Other risky places to live include Seattle, Washington, with its nearby active volcanoes and vulnerability to earthquakes. Coastal areas of Hawaii and Alaska are unsafe because of possible tsunamis. The southern United States can be dangerous … Read more

In 1998, about 16 percent of the U.S. population, forty three million people, changed addresses. Most moved within their own county, but 15 percent packed up and moved to another state. The average American changes residence 11 to 13 times over a lifetime. Various studies have found that moving house is often particularly stressful for … Read more

The most common surnames in the United States in order, are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, and Brown. A surname is a name added to a given name and in many cases, a surname is a family name. In Western countries, a surname is also known as a “last name”, but in many countries in Asia, … Read more

In Alaska, 9 of 10 high school students graduate and get their diplomas. The lowest percentage of high school graduates is in South Carolina, where only three of four students finish high school. The 10 states with the lowest rankings in high school completion were southern states or states that bordered on southern states. The … Read more

By far, the Roman Catholic Church, which has 62 million members in the United States, is the largest church group in the United States. Next in line are the Southern Baptist Convention, with 15.7 million; the United Methodist Church, with 8.4 million; the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc., with 8.2 million; the Church of God … Read more

If you guessed that Main Street is the most common street name in the United States, you’d be wrong. It’s Second Street, mainly because many former Main Streets and First Streets were later given other names. In second place is Park Street, followed by Third, Fourth, and Fifth Streets. The most popular street name with … Read more

More than twice as many people will be living in the United States a hundred years from now, says the Census Bureau. Experts predict that the nation will have 338 million people by 2025, 404 million people by 2050, and 571 million by 2100. They expect this increase even though the U.S. birthrate is stable, … Read more

The 10 largest U.S. states in population as of the 2000 Census were: California 33,871,648 Texas 20,851,820 New York 18,976,457 Florida 15,982,378 Illinois 12,419,293 Pennsylvania 12,281,054 Ohio 11,353,140 Michigan 9,938,444 New Jersey 8,414,350 Georgia 8,186,453 U.S. Census Bureau experts predict that by 2025, Florida will become the third largest state, bumping New York to the fourth spot. More than twice as many people live in … Read more

Puerto Rico, an island in the Caribbean Sea southeast of Florida, is a United States territory, with about 3.8 million people. Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory, along with the Pacific island of Guam, when the Treaty of Paris was signed after the Spanish-American War in 1898. Puerto Rico became a commonwealth in 1952, meaning … Read more

The western states are growing in population much faster than the United States as a whole. Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona each grew by more than 30 percent during the 1990s, while the total U.S. growth rate was 13 percent. Nevada grew by more than 66 percent, the fastest growing state of all. Other fast … Read more

African Americans make up the largest minority group in the United States, but Hispanics are not far behind. In 2000, African Americans made up 12.8 percent of the U.S. population, while Hispanics represented 12.5 percent, Asians and Pacific Islanders about 4.1 percent; and Native Americans 0.9 percent. By 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts, Hispanics … Read more

The U.S. Virgin Islands, not to be confused with the British Virgin Islands, are a territory of the United States. They lie about 40 miles (64 km) east of Puerto Rico. The U.S. government purchased this group of 50 islands and cays from Denmark in 1917. The reason? During World War I, the U.S. government … Read more

About 26 million of the 273 million people living in the United States in 1999 were born somewhere else. Half were born in Latin America, including Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. A fourth were born in Asia, including the Philippines, China, Vietnam, and India. A fifth were born in Europe. Half of … Read more

Almost a million people immigrate to the United States yearly, although the Census Bureau predicts that the number will drop to about 700,000 a year by 2011. The main reason people come to the United States is for better-paying jobs. For example, one study showed that people who were earning only about $31 a week … Read more

More than 30 million Americans are non-native speakers of English. Spanish speaking people lead the list, followed by native speakers of French, German, Italian, Chinese, Tagalog, Polish, Korean, and Vietnamese. English is the de facto national language of the United States, although there is no official language. In 2007, about 80% of the population aged … Read more

Americans have been a people on the move since the nation’s beginnings. But as European settlers moved in, Native Americans lost out. The population of Native Americans was between 5 million and 10 million when English colonists first landed in the 1600s, but by 1900 fewer than 250,000 Native Americans were left. Many died from … Read more

Nearly 50 million people visit the United States from other countries every year. Most of them are tourists or businesspeople, and most come from Canada and Europe. Interestingly, in recent years more Europeans visited the United States than the number of Americans who visited Europe. As of 2008, the most visited tourist attraction in the … Read more

All of the fastest growing cities in the United States in the 1990s were in the West or the South. Number one is Las Vegas, which added nearly half a million residents to its population between 1990 and 1998. Following Las Vegas, the fastest growing cities in the United States were: Las Vegas, Nevada Laredo, … Read more

A metropolitan area is much larger than the area within the official city limits. A metropolitan area includes the central core city as well as the nearby communities that are tied to that city in terms of business and social activities. The U.S. Census Bureau defines these metropolitan areas. In land area, Juneau, Alaska, is … Read more

A sand sea, also called an erg, is a huge area of sand dunes. The largest sand sea in the Western Hemisphere is in central Nebraska. The Nebraska Sand Hills are a 20,000 square mile (52,000 sq km) dune field that covers the western third of the state. Because the area receives adequate rainfall, grasses … Read more

The word “badlands,” to geologists, means a region that has been badly eroded by water and wind. The result is an area of deep gullies and small, steep hills. The soil is poor or nonexistent, and few plants grow there. Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota is such a place. It features acres of … Read more

A plateau is an elevated area that spreads over a large region. A mesa, from the Spanish word for table, is a plateau that drops steeply off on all sides. A butte is a smaller mesa and is formed when a mesa erodes. If you visit the Four Corners area of the United States, the … Read more

The Earth is not a solid shell, but rather slabs of rock that scientists call Tectonic Plates. These plates, seven large plates and several smaller ones, have been moving for millions of years. They hold the ocean floors and the continents. Their movements cause new seafloor to form and earthquakes and volcanoes to occur. Mountain … Read more

California has so many earthquakes because the San Andreas Fault runs some 800 miles (1,288 km) through the state. The San Andreas Fault is a crack in the Earth’s crust that extends 10 miles (161 km) deep in some places. Geologists call it a strike-slip type of fault, meaning the rock on one side of … Read more

Earthquakes can not be predicted. Geologists can, however, calculate the probability of future earthquakes based on past activity. They know that very large earthquakes have happened along the southern part of the San Andreas Fault about every 150 years for the past 1,500 years or so. A large quake hit that area in 1857, so … Read more

On the Richter scale, Alaska’s Good Friday earthquake in 1964 in Prince William Sound measured 9.2, the strongest ever recorded. This quake was felt over a 500,000 square mile (1.3 million sq km) area, killed 114 people, and released more than 125 times the energy of the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906. But … Read more

The Richter scale measures the magnitude, or size, of an earthquake by using a seismograph to measure the ground motion an earthquake produces. The scale is logarithmic. A measurement of 7 means an earthquake that has 10 times the ground motion of an earthquake that measures 6. We can’t feel an earthquake that has a … Read more

Even though most U.S. earthquakes happen in California and Alaska, earthquakes have been recorded in every U.S. state. The fewest earthquakes occur in Florida and North Dakota. The largest earthquake in the conterminous United States (i.e., excluding Alaska and Hawaii) happened on February 7, 1812, along the New Madrid Fault at New Madrid in southeastern … Read more

The United States does have active volcanoes. In fact, the United States is third in the world in the number of active volcanoes ever recorded, behind Indonesia and Japan. About 1,500 volcanoes have erupted all over the world in the past 10,000 years, and about 150 of those were in the United States. Today, active … Read more

Tsunami are huge, destructive waves that follow an earthquake or disturbance that has happened in the Earth’s crust under the ocean. The word is Japanese, meaning harbor wave; it’s pronounced “tsoo-nah-mee.” They’re wrongly called tidal waves, since they have nothing to do with the tides. During an earthquake, cracks open up along the ocean floor. … Read more

The 2000 Census showed that about 281 million people lived in the United States, excluding Puerto Rico and the U.S. island territories. It is estimated that the population of the United States in 2010 is about 310 million. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Web page features a population clock that shows the estimated U.S. population as … Read more

The distance between Cape Dezhnyov, Russia, and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, at the narrowest part of the Bering Strait, is 51 miles (82 km). The Bering Strait connects the Bering Sea, which is part of the Pacific Ocean, with the Arctic Ocean, and separates Asia and North America. The Bering Strait is named after … Read more

Alaska is the best place to see the aurora borealis in the United States but people in northern New England may be able to see auroras a few nights a year. Occasionally people in the northern Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic states can see them as well. They are best viewed on clear nights around midnight … Read more

Auroras, or aurora borealis (northern lights) in the Northern Hemisphere and aurora australis (southern lights) in the Southern Hemisphere, occur when the particles that constantly stream from the sun’s surface, called the solar wind, approach the Earth’s magnetic field. Some of these particles collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the upper atmosphere, creating a … Read more

The Grand Canyon is not the deepest canyon in the United States. Hells Canyon, formed by the erosive action of the Snake River through the mountains on the Oregon–Idaho border, is more than 8,032 feet (2,448 m) deep at its lowest point and extends for 40 miles (64 km). The Grand Canyon, a gorge in … Read more

Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Oklahoma were wholly contained in the Louisiana Purchase. In addition, most of the land in Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Minnesota was part of the Louisiana Purchase. The French territory of Louisiana stretched northwest from the present state of Louisiana all the way to the … Read more

The regular rectangular farms that define much of the American Midwest and West are a result of a surveying technique called the township method that the federal government required surveyors to use in the Ohio Territory beginning in 1785. The township method continued to be used when the Louisiana Purchase was surveyed in the early … Read more

The 275 square mile (715 sq km) White Sands National Monument, in the northern part of New Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert, is covered with sand made of gypsum crystals, which are usually white. Sand is defined as sediment created by the mechanical and chemical breakdown of rocks. In the United States, most desert and beach sand … Read more

The United States contains four desert regions: the Great Basin Desert, the Sonoran Desert, the Mojave Desert, and the Chihuahuan Desert. The Great Basin desert covers much of Nevada and spills into parts of Oregon, California, Idaho, and Utah. It is cooler than the other three desert regions and gets some snow in winter. The … Read more

The Continental Divide is the top, or crest, of the Rocky Mountains. All streams west of the divide eventually flow into the Pacific Ocean, while all streams east of the divide flow into the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. The Continental Divide stretches from New Mexico all the way up to Alaska. The … Read more

Not every state in the United States has caves. Several states do not have caves, including North Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana, Rhode Island, and Delaware. Most caves in the United States are karst caves. These caves formed when rainwater, which combines with the carbon dioxide in the air and forms a weak acid, seeped into rock … Read more

There are actually two falls on the Niagara River, the American Falls in New York State and the Horseshoe Falls in Canada. The Niagara River forms part of the U.S.–Canada border. The shape and location of Niagara Falls have changed many times over the centuries. Just 700 years ago, for example, there was just one … Read more

Florida has the lowest highest point in the United States, with its highest point is a place in Walton County that is 345 feet (105 m) above sea level. Walton County was created in 1824, and was named after George Walton, Secretary of the Florida territory from 1821 to 1826. It is estimated that in … Read more

Crater Lake in Oregon is the deepest lake in the United States, at 1,932 feet (588 m). The lake was formed entirely by rain and snow falling into the collapsed volcanic crater of Mount Mazama, in the Cascade Mountains. Mount Mazama’s top fell in about 7,700 years ago. The lake is almost 6 miles (10 … Read more

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the United States, and in the world as well. It covers an area of 31,800 square miles (82,680 sq km). Lake Superior holds about 2,900 cubic miles, or 12,000 cubic kilometers. It is the northernmost of the Great Lakes and touches Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan as well … Read more

Although surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the islands that make up the state of Hawaii have a total of only 36 square miles (94 sq km) of inland water. Alaska has the most water, with 17,501 square miles (45,502 sq km). Hawaii is the only state of the United States that is completely surrounded by … Read more

Michigan borders four of the five Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie. The state of Michigan does not touch Lake Ontario, which is bordered by New York and the province of Ontario, Canada. To remember the names of the Great Lakes, think of HOMES, for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. The Great Lakes … Read more

All but one of the Great Lakes border on Canada. Lake Michigan lies entirely within the United States. The Great Lakes hold about one fifth of the world’s freshwater, covering an area of about 95,000 square miles (247,000 sq km) altogether. If you could empty all the water out of the Great Lakes and spread … Read more

The Mississippi River is 2,340 miles (3,767 km) long, making it the longest in the United States. The Missouri River, at 2,315 miles (3,727 km) long, is the second longest, and together they form the fourth longest river system in the world. The Missouri River begins its journey in the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana, … Read more

The highest waterfall in the United States is in Yosemite National Park in California. Yosemite Falls is made up of an upper fall, the middle cascades, and a lower fall totaling 2,425 feet (739 m). It is the fifth tallest waterfall in the world, as tall as Chicago’s Sears Tower and Paris’s Eiffel Tower combined. … Read more