The United States of America a panoramic view of american geography

Americans' encounter with their land has been abrupt and often violent, consuming much of the nation's energies. Americans had to confront and come to terms with a huge, wild country. It has been said that America is a nation with an abundance of geography but a shortage of history. It took less than 400 years to subdue more than 3 million square miles of territory. Even today much of the U.S. remains relatively unpopulated.

Just as Americans have reshaped the face of their land, the people themselves have been shaped by constant contact with the land. But the geography of the country played into their hands – the country was insulated by large oceans from political threat, and the land allowed Americans to become self-sufficient in agriculture and basic minerals. A magnificent system of natural waterways linked distant parts of a vast territory, made travel cheap, and allowed great mobility.

Over the course of time the American land yielded a bounty whose reputation spread around the globe and attracted floods of immigrants. Sometimes the reports of that bounty were overblown by land speculators and travel agents, and people were enticed to America through promises of paradise on earth. In spite of such hyperboles, however, the wealth of the land was still considerable.

Settlement of the American land was often a painful process. Territory was usually settled before it was well known, and people learned geography from hard experience by trial and error.

Today the United States is the fourth largest country in the world, in both size and population. It covers an area of 3,618,465 square miles. The U.S. is divided into 50 states. Those which border one another on the continent are grouped into seven regions: New England, Middle Atlantic States, Southern States, Midwestern States, Rocky Mountains States, Southwestern States and Pacific Coast States. In addition there are Hawaii and Alaska.

U. S. Territories

When most people think of the United States, they think about the 50 states, but they often forget that other parts of the world are part of the United States, too. A U.S. territory is an area of land that belongs to the U.S. government but is not a state. Right now there are five U.S. territories: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam. These territories are unincorporated, which means that the land belongs to the United States, but only certain parts of the U.S. Constitution are applied to those territories. Let’s take a look at what this means for one territory, Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory in 1898 at the end of the Spanish-American War. Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States. Since then, Puerto Rico has been a U.S. territory. The head of state of Puerto Rico is the president of the United States. But Puerto Rico also has its own government which mirrors the U.S. government. Puerto Rico’s government has three branches just like the U.S. government does. These branches are the executive (which enforces laws), the legislative (which makes laws), and the judicial (which decides what laws mean). In the United States, the head of the executive branch is the president. In Puerto Rico, the head of the executive branch is called a governor.

The 50 states in the United States have representation in Congress, meaning that people from those states can vote in the national legislature. As a territory, Puerto Rico doesn’t have this same representation, but it does have a nonvoting delegate, which is a person who is elected to be part of the U.S. Congress but cannot vote there.

An interesting thing is that Puerto Ricans who live in Puerto Rico are prohibited from voting in the U.S. presidential elections. But Puerto Ricans who live in a U.S. state can vote to decide who will be the next U.S. president.