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Life in the USA Land, History and Language The American Land
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The Continental United States
The Continental United States (the 48 states other than Alaska and Hawaii) has several major topographical regions, and covers four time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. The Atlantic coast varies from flat barrier reefs to hilly coastline. The northeastern coast functions as a vast megalopolis with cities like Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and many others. The southeast has growing cities like Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami. The Appalachian Mountains begin fairly close to the coast, stretching north-south for most of the nation's length from Maine to north Georgia. Within the Appalachian Mountain chain are smaller mountain chains, such as the Adirondacks and Catskills in New York, the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania and the Smokies in Tennessee and North Carolina.
West of the Appalachians in the center of the continent, the land flattens out. The Mississippi
River with its tributaries the Ohio and Missouri drains this vast central region into the Gulf of
Mexico. The Great Lakes to the north support industrial cities like Cleveland, Chicago,
Detroit and Buffalo. The Mississippi itself showcases the great cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul,
St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. Kansas City, Missouri is the great trading city of the
center of the continent. In the western half of this central region, Texas, with its great cities
of Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, reaches north into Oklahoma, Kansas and the great
plains and abuts the southwestern states on its west. The southwest encompasses the largely
arid states of New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, with cities like Albuquerque, Phoenix,
Tucson and the ever-growing Las Vegas. North of this area, the great rocky mountain city is
Denver, Colorado; another is Salt Lake City, Utah. On the far west coast, California, with its
great cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco, exists almost as a nation
in itself, and the Pacific Northwestern states of Washington and Oregon with their cities of
Seattle and Portland have their own unique heritage.
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