Western United States

While the West is defined by many occupations, the American cowboy is often used as an icon of the region, here portrayed by C. M. Russell.

The West, as the most recent part of the United States, is often known for broad highways and freeways and open space. Pictured is a road in Utah to Monument Valley.

The Western U.S. is the largest region of the country, covering more than half the land area of the contiguous United States. It is also the most geographically diverse, incorporating geographic regions such as the temperate rainforests of the Northwest, the highest mountain ranges (including the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascade Range), numerous glaciers, and the western portions of the Great Plains. It also contains the majority of the desert areas located in the United States. The Mojave and Great Basin deserts lie entirely within the Western region, along with parts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts (the latter extends significantly into Texas). Given this expansive and diverse geography it is no wonder the region is difficult to specifically define. Sensing a possible shift in the popular understanding of the West as a region in the early 1990s, historian Walter Nugent conducted a survey of three groups of professionals with ties to the region: a large group of Western historians (187 respondents), and two smaller groups, 25 journalists and publishers and 39 Western authors.[6] A majority of the historian respondents placed the eastern boundary of the West east of the Census definition out on the eastern edge of the Great Plains or on the Mississippi River. The survey respondents as a whole showed just how little agreement there was on the boundaries of the West.

Subregions

The region is split into two smaller units, or divisions, by the U.S. Census Bureau:[1]

Mountain states

Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada

Pacific states

Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, and Hawaii

Other classifications distinguish between Southwest and Northwest. Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas, and the Oklahoma panhandle are typically considered to be the Southwest states. Meanwhile, the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington can be considered part of the Northwest or Pacific Northwest.

The term West Coast is commonly used to refer to just California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, whereas Hawaii is more geographically isolated from the continental U.S. and do not necessarily fit in any of these subregions.

State	2019 Estimate [3]	2010 Census[7]	Change	Area [2]	Density
Arizona	7,278,717	6,392,017	+13.87%	113,594.08 sq mi (294,207.3 km2)	64/sq mi (25/km2)
Colorado	5,758,736	5,029,196	+14.51%	103,641.89 sq mi (268,431.3 km2)	56/sq mi (21/km2)
Utah	3,205,958	2,763,885	+15.99%	82,169.62 sq mi (212,818.3 km2)	39/sq mi (15/km2)
Nevada	3,080,156	2,700,551	+14.06%	109,781.18 sq mi (284,332.0 km2)	28/sq mi (11/km2)
New Mexico	2,096,829	2,059,179	+1.83%	121,298.15 sq mi (314,160.8 km2)	17/sq mi (7/km2)
Idaho	1,787,065	1,567,582	+14.00%	82,643.12 sq mi (214,044.7 km2)	22/sq mi (8/km2)
Montana	1,068,778	989,415	+8.02%	145,545.80 sq mi (376,961.9 km2)	7/sq mi (3/km2)
Wyoming	578,759	563,626	+2.68%	97,093.14 sq mi (251,470.1 km2)	6/sq mi (2/km2)
Mountain	24,854,998	22,065,451	+12.64%	855,766.98 sq mi (2,216,426.3 km2)	29/sq mi (11/km2)
California	39,512,223	37,254,523	+6.06%	155,779.22 sq mi (403,466.3 km2)	254/sq mi (98/km2)
Washington	7,614,893	6,724,540	+13.24%	66,455.52 sq mi (172,119.0 km2)	115/sq mi (44/km2)
Oregon	4,217,737	3,831,074	+10.09%	95,988.01 sq mi (248,607.8 km2)	44/sq mi (17/km2)
Hawaii	1,415,872	1,360,301	+4.09%	6,422.63 sq mi (16,634.5 km2)	220/sq mi (85/km2)
Alaska	731,545	710,231	+3.00%	570,640.95 sq mi (1,477,953.3 km2)	1/sq mi (0/km2)
Pacific	53,492,270	49,880,669	+7.24%	895,286.33 sq mi (2,318,781.0 km2)	60/sq mi (23/km2)
West	78,347,268	71,946,120	+8.90%	1,751,053.31 sq mi (4,535,207.3 km2)	45/sq mi (17/km2)

Outlying areas

Ofu Beach on Ofu Island in American Samoa

The three inhabited Pacific U.S. territories (American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) are sometimes considered part of the Western United States. American Samoa is in Polynesia in the South Pacific Ocean, while Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are in the Mariana Islands in the western North Pacific Ocean. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands have district courts within the 9th Circuit, which includes western states such as California and Nevada.[8] (See District Court of Guam and District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands). American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands are also considered part of the western U.S. by the U.S. National Park Service,[9] the Federal Reserve Bank system,[10] FEMA,[11] and the USGS.[12]

Territory	2020 Population Estimate [13][14][15]	2010 Census population[16]	Change	Area [13][14][15]	Density
American Samoa	49,437	55,519	−10.95%	224 km2 (86 sq mi)	221/km2 (572/sq mi)
Guam	168,485	159,358	+5.73%	544 km2 (210 sq mi)	310/km2 (802/sq mi)
Northern Mariana Islands	51,433	53,833	−4.46%	464 km2 (179 sq mi)	111/km2 (287/sq mi)

The population distribution by race in the Western United States (2010):[17]

• 66.4% Non-Hispanic Whites
• 28.6% were Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
• 9.3% Asian
• 4.8% Black or African American
• 1.9% American Indian or Alaska Native
• 12.4% Some other race

As defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Western region of the United States includes 13 states[1] with a total 2013 estimated population of 74,254,423.[18]

The West is one of the most sparsely settled areas in the United States with 49.5 inhabitants per square mile (19/km²). Only Texas with 78.0 inhabitants/sq mi. (30/km²), Washington with 86.0 inhabitants/sq mi. (33/km²), and California with 213.4 inhabitants/sq mi. (82/km²) exceed the national average of 77.98 inhabitants/sq mi. (30/km²).

These maps from the 2000 US Census highlight differences from state to state of three minority groups. Note that most of the American Indian, Hispanic, and Asian population is in the West.

The entire Western region has also been strongly influenced by European, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Native Americans; it contains the largest number of minorities in the U.S. While most of the studies of racial dynamics in America such as riots in Los Angeles have been written about European and African Americans, in many cities in the West and California, Whites and Blacks together are less than half the population because of the preference for the region by Hispanics and Asians. African and European Americans, however, continue to wield a stronger political influence because of the lower rates of citizenship and voting among Asians and Hispanics.

The West also contains much of the Native American population in the U.S., particularly in the large reservations in the Mountain and Desert States.

The largest concentrations for African Americans in the West can be found in San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno, San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, and Colorado Springs.

The Western United States has a higher sex ratio (more males than females) than any other region in the United States.[19]

Because the tide of development had not yet reached most of the West when conservation became a national issue, agencies of the federal government own and manage vast areas of land. (The most important among these are the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management within the Interior Department, and the U.S. Forest Service within the Agriculture Department.) National parks are reserved for recreational activities such as fishing, camping, hiking, and boating, but other government lands also allow commercial activities like ranching, logging, and mining. In recent years, some local residents who earn their livelihoods on federal land have come into conflict with the land's managers, who are required to keep land use within environmentally acceptable limits.

The largest city in the region is Los Angeles, located on the West Coast. Other West Coast cities include San Diego, San Bernardino, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Seattle, Tacoma, Anchorage, and Portland. Prominent cities in the Mountain States include Denver, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Boise, El Paso, and Billings.

The Western United States is subdivided into three major physiographic regions: the Rocky Mountains (16–19), the Intermontane Plateaus (20–22), and the Pacific Mountains (23–25)

Along the Pacific Ocean coast lie the Coast Ranges, which, while not approaching the scale of the Rocky Mountains, are formidable nevertheless. They collect a large part of the airborne moisture moving in from the ocean. East of the Coast Ranges lie several cultivated fertile valleys, notably the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys of California and the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

Zion National Park in southern Utah is one of five national parks in the state.

Big Sur, California

The Mojave Desert covers much of the Southwestern United States

Grand Canyon, Arizona

Beyond the valleys lie the Sierra Nevada in the south and the Cascade Range in the north. Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) the tallest peak in the contiguous 48 states, is in the Sierra Nevada. The Cascades are also volcanic. Mount Rainier, a volcano in Washington, is also over 14,000 feet (4,300 m). Mount St. Helens, a volcano in the Cascades erupted explosively in 1980. A major volcanic eruption at Mount Mazama around 4860 BC formed Crater Lake. These mountain ranges see heavy precipitation, capturing most of the moisture that remains after the Coast Ranges, and creating a rain shadow to the east forming vast stretches of arid land. These dry areas encompass much of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. The Mojave Desert and Sonoran Desert along with other deserts are found here.

Red sunset twilight in Landers in the High Desert region of California

The High Desert region of Oregon

Feral horses in the Pryor Mountains of Southeast Montana

Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

Beyond the deserts lie the Rocky Mountains. In the north, they run almost immediately east of the Cascade Range, so that the desert region is only a few miles wide by the time one reaches the Canada–US border. The Rockies are hundreds of miles (kilometers) wide, and run uninterrupted from New Mexico to Alaska. The Rocky Mountain Region is the highest overall area of the United States, with an average elevation of above 4,000 feet (1,200 m). The tallest peaks of the Rockies, 54 of which are over 14,000 feet (4,300 m), are found in central and western Colorado. East of the Rocky Mountains is the Great Plains, the western portions (for example, the eastern half of Colorado) of which are generally considered to be part of the western United States.

The West has several long rivers that empty into the Pacific Ocean, while the eastern rivers run into the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River forms the easternmost possible boundary for the West today. The Missouri River, a tributary of the Mississippi, flows from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains eastward across the Great Plains, a vast grassy plateau, before sloping gradually down to the forests and hence to the Mississippi. The Colorado River snakes through the Mountain states, at one point forming the Grand Canyon.

The Colorado River is a major source of water in the Southwest and many dams, such as the Hoover Dam, form reservoirs along it. So much water is drawn for drinking water throughout the West and irrigation in California that in most years, water from the Colorado River no longer reaches the Gulf of California. The Columbia River, the largest river in volume flowing into the Pacific Ocean from North America, and its tributary, the Snake River, water the Pacific Northwest. The Platte runs through Nebraska and was known for being a mile (2 km) wide but only a half-inch (1 cm) deep. The Rio Grande forms the border between Texas and Mexico before turning due north and splitting New Mexico in half.

According to the United States Coast Guard, "The Western Rivers System consists of the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Cumberland, Arkansas, and White Rivers and their tributaries, and certain other rivers that flow towards the Gulf of Mexico."[20] The Ohio River portion of the system includes parts of several Atlantic coastal states, from Georgia to New York.[21]

Early Native American tribal territories

The Western United States has been populated by Native Americans since at least 11,000 years ago, when the first Paleo-Indians arrived. Pre-Columbian trade routes to kingdoms and empires such as the Mound Builders existed in places such as Yellowstone National Park since around 1000 AD. Major settlement of the western territories developed rapidly in the 1840s, largely through the Oregon Trail and the California Gold Rush of 1849. California experienced such a rapid growth in a few short months that it was admitted to statehood in 1850 without the normal transitory phase of becoming an official territory.[26]

One of the largest migrations in American history occurred in the 1840s as the Latter Day Saints left the Midwest to build a theocracy in Utah.

Both Omaha, Nebraska and St. Louis, Missouri laid claim to the title, "Gateway to the West" during this period. Omaha, home to the Union Pacific Railroad and the Mormon Trail, made its fortunes on outfitting settlers; St. Louis built itself upon the vast fur trade in the West before its settlement.

The 1850s were marked by political battles over the expansion of slavery into the western territories, issues leading to the Civil War.[27]

The history of the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has acquired a cultural mythos in the literature and cinema of the United States. The image of the cowboy, the homesteader, and westward expansion took real events and transmuted them into a myth of the west which has shaped much of American popular culture since the late 19th century.[28]

Writers as diverse as Bret Harte and Zane Grey celebrated or derided cowboy culture, while artists such as Frederic Remington created western art as a method of recording the expansion into the west. The American cinema, in particular, created the genre of the western movie, which, in many cases, use the West as a metaphor for the virtue of self-reliance and an American ethos. The contrast between the romanticism of culture about the West and the actuality of the history of the westward expansion has been a theme of late 20th and early 21st century scholarship about the West. Cowboy culture has become embedded in the American experience as a common cultural touchstone, and modern forms as diverse as country and western music have celebrated the sense of isolation and independence of spirit inspired by the frontiersmen on "virgin land".[29]

Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument, Utah, contains petroglyphs left by the first inhabitants of the American Southwest.

Facing both the Pacific Ocean and the Mexican border, the West has been shaped by a variety of ethnic groups. Hawaii is the only state in the union in which Asian Americans outnumber white American residents. Asians from many countries have settled in California and other coastal states in several waves of immigration since the 19th century, contributing to the Gold rush, the building of the transcontinental railroad, agriculture, and more recently, high technology.

The border states—California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas—and other southwestern states such as Colorado, Utah, and Nevada all have large Hispanic populations, and the many Spanish place names attest to their history as former Spanish and Mexican territories. Mexican-Americans have also had a growing population in Northwestern states of Oregon and Washington, as well as the southern states of Texas and Oklahoma.

The Hollywood sign in the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, has come to represent the American film industry.

In the Pacific states, the wide areas filled with small towns, farms, and forests are supplemented by a few big port cities which have evolved into world centers for the media and technology industries. Now the second largest city in the nation, Los Angeles is best known as the home of the Hollywood film industry; the area around Los Angeles also was a major center for the aerospace industry by World War II, though Boeing, located in Washington state would lead the aerospace industry. Fueled by the growth of Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco Bay area, including Silicon Valley, the center of America's high tech industry, California has become the most populous of all the 50 states.

Alaska—the northernmost state in the Union—is a vast land of few people, many of them native, and of great stretches of wilderness, protected in national parks and wildlife refuges. Hawaii's location makes it a major gateway between the United States and Asia, as well as a center for tourism.

Oregon and Washington have also seen rapid growth with the rise of Boeing and Microsoft along with agriculture and resource based industries. The desert and mountain states have relatively low population densities, and developed as ranching and mining areas which are only recently becoming urbanized. Most of them have highly individualistic cultures, and have worked to balance the interests of urban development, recreation, and the environment.

Culturally distinctive points include the large Mormon population in the Mormon Corridor, including southeastern Idaho, Utah, Northern Arizona, and Nevada; the extravagant casino resort towns of Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; and the numerous American Indian tribal reservations.

These are the largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) with a population above 500,000 in the 13 Western states with population estimates as of July 1, 2015 as defined by the United States Census Bureau:[35]

Rank (West)	Rank (USA)[36]	MSA	Population	State(s)
1	2	Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA	13,340,068	California
2	11	San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward MSA	4,656,132	California
3	12	Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale MSA	4,574,531	Arizona
4	13	San Bernardino-Riverside-Ontario MSA	4,489,159	California
5	15	Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue MSA	3,733,580	Washington
6	17	San Diego-Carlsbad MSA	3,299,521	California
7	19	Denver-Aurora-Lakewood MSA	2,814,330	Colorado
8	23	Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro MSA	2,389,228	Oregon Washington
9	27	Sacramento-Roseville-Arden-Arcade MSA	2,274,194	California
10	29	Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise MSA	2,114,801	Nevada
11	35	San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA	1,976,836	California
12	48	Salt Lake City MSA	1,170,266	Utah
13	53	Tucson MSA	1,010,025	Arizona
14	54	Honolulu MSA	998,714	Hawaii
15	56	Fresno MSA	974,861	California
16	60	Albuquerque MSA	907,301	New Mexico
17	61	Bakersfield-Delano MSA	882,176	California
18	66	Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura MSA	850,536	California
19	77	Stockton-Lodi MSA	726,106	California
20	80	Colorado Springs MSA	697,856	Colorado
21	81	Boise City MSA	676,909	Idaho
22	86	Ogden-Clearfield MSA	642,850	Utah
23	93	Provo-Orem MSA	585,799	Utah
24	100	Spokane-Spokane Valley MSA	547,824	Washington
25	102	Modesto MSA	538,388	California
26	106	Santa Rosa MSA	502,146	California

States where state-level laws allowed legalized medicinal marijuana before 2005

State laws regarding assisted suicide in the United States

---

  Legal

  Legal under court ruling¹

  Illegal

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¹ In some states assisted suicide is protected through court ruling even though specific legislation allowing it does not exist.

States that have no income tax at the state level

The region's distance from historical centers of power in the East, and the celebrated "frontier spirit" of its settlers offer two clichés for explaining the region's independent, heterogeneous politics. Historically, the West was the first region to see widespread women's suffrage, with women casting votes in Utah and Wyoming as early as 1870, five decades before the 19th Amendment was ratified by the nation. California birthed both the property rights and conservation movements, and spawned such phenomena as the Taxpayer Revolt and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. It has also produced three presidents: Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

The prevalence of libertarian political attitudes is widespread. For example, the majority of Western states have legalized medicinal marijuana (all but Utah and Wyoming) and some forms of gambling (except Utah); Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and Montana have legalized physician-assisted suicide; most rural counties in Nevada allow licensed brothels, and voters in Alaska, Colorado, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington have legalized recreational use of marijuana.[38]

California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Hawaii and New Mexico lean toward the Democratic Party. In recent times, as seen in the 2020 United States presidential election, Arizona & Nevada are also beginning to lean towards the Democratic Party as well. San Francisco's two main political parties are the Green Party and the Democratic Party. One of the Democratic leaders of the Congress is from the region: Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi of California.

Alaska and most Mountain states are more Republican, with Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming being Republican strongholds, and Nevada and Arizona being swing states. The state of Nevada is considered a political bellwether, having correctly voted for every president except twice (in 1976 and 2016) since 1912. New Mexico too is considered a bellwether, having voted for the popular vote winner in every presidential election since statehood, except in 1976. The state of Arizona has been won by the Republican presidential candidate in every election except three times since 1948, but in 2020 Arizona voted Democratic. Also, in 2018 and 2020, the GOP lost both Arizona Senate seats to the Democrats. The states of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming have been won by the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1964. Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah have been some of the country's most Republican states.

As the fastest-growing demographic group, after Asians, Latinos are hotly contested by both parties. Immigration is an important political issue for this group. Backlash against undocumented immigrants led to the passage of California Proposition 187 in 1994, a ballot initiative which would have denied many public services to them. Association of this proposal with California Republicans, especially incumbent governor Pete Wilson, drove many Hispanic voters to the Democrats.[39]

The following table shows the breakdown of party affiliation of governors, attorneys general, state legislative houses, and U.S. congressional delegation for the Western states, as of 2019.

The following table shows the breakdown of party affiliation of governors, attorneys general, state legislative houses, and U.S. congressional delegation for the outlying areas of the Western United States, as of 2020.[40][41][42]

The Western United States consistently ranks well in health measures. The rate of potentially preventable hospitalizations in the Western United States was consistently lower than other regions from 2005 to 2011.[43] While the proportion of maternal or neonatal hospital stays was higher in the Western United States relative to other regions, the proportion of medical stays in hospitals was lower than in other regions in 2012.[44]

• Abbott, Carl. How cities won the West: Four centuries of urban change in western North America (U New Mexico Press, 2008).
• Avella, Steven M. "Catholicism in the twentieth-century American West: The next frontier." Catholic historical review 97.2 (2011): 219–249.
• Beck, Warren A., Haase, Ynez D.; Historical Atlas of the American West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
• Everett, Derek R. Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
• González, Jesús Ángel. "New Frontiers for Post-Western Cinema: Frozen River, Sin Nombre, Winter's Bone." Western American Literature 50.1 (2015): 51–76.
• Lamar, Howard. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. (Yale UP, 1998).
• Lamont, Victoria. "Big books wanted: women and western American literature in the twenty-first century." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 31.2 (2014): 311-326 online.
• Lehan, Richard. Quest West: American Intellectual and Cultural Transformations (LSU Press, 2014).
• Milner II, Clyde A; O'Connor, Carol A.; Sandweiss, Martha A. The Oxford History of the American West. Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Phillips, Charles; Axlerod, Alan; editor. The Encyclopedia of the American West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
• Pomeroy, Earl. The American Far West in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
• Turner, Frederick Jackson. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: 'The Significance of the Frontier in American History' and Other Essays. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
• Weber, David J. “The Spanish Borderlands, Historiography Redux.” The History Teacher, 39#1 (2005), pp. 43–56. , online.
• White, Richard. "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
• Witschi, Nicolas S. ed. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American (2011) excerpt
• Wright, Will. Six Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western (U of California Press, 1975), movies.
• Wrobel, David M. America's West: A History, 1890–1950 (Cambridge UP, 2017).

• History of the American West Photo collection at Library of Congress
• Photographs of the American West: 1861–1912 US National Archives & Records Administration
• Institute for the Study of the American West
• Center of the American West
• History: American West, Vlib.us
• Collection: "Manifest Destiny and the American West" from the University of Michigan Museum of Art ===