US Territories: Puerto Rico, Guam and 12 More

The 5 inhabited US territories

Four of the five came under US control between 1898 and 1917: Puerto Rico and Guam from Spain in 1898, American Samoa in 1900, the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. The Northern Mariana Islands, taken from Japan in 1944 and run by the United States under a UN trusteeship from 1947, became a US commonwealth last, in 1978. Their sizes differ as much: Puerto Rico holds 3.3 million people on about 3,500 square miles, American Samoa about 50,000 on 77.

The codes are the two-letter USPS abbreviations that sit next to the 50 states in an address form (all the state codes). Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands keep Atlantic time all year, an hour ahead of New York in winter. Guam and the Northern Marianas are west of the International Date Line, which is why Guam calls itself the place "where America's day begins", while American Samoa, on the other side of the line, runs 21 hours behind Guam (US time zones).

Why 3.6 million Americans cannot vote for president

Article II of the Constitution gives presidential electors to the states. A territory is not a state, so it has none. Washington, DC has three only because the 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961, granted them (see how the Electoral College works). The territories' wider legal status comes from the Insular Cases, chief among them Downes v. Bidwell in 1901, in which the Supreme Court held that Puerto Rico belonged to the United States without being part of it, the root of the "unincorporated territory" doctrine under which the Constitution does not apply there in full.

Each of the five sends one delegate to the House of Representatives, as DC does. Delegates sit on committees, introduce bills and vote in committee, but cannot vote on the final passage of a bill. Puerto Rico's, called the Resident Commissioner, serves four years; the others serve two, like other House members. No territory has a senator.

Residents still vote in the parties' presidential primaries and send delegates to the national conventions. And for citizens the rule follows where they live: a Puerto Rican who moves to Florida, or to DC, can vote for president as soon as they register there.

Puerto Rico, the largest territory

At the 2020 Census, Puerto Rico had more residents than 21 of the 50 states, Utah, Iowa and Nevada among them, and as a state it would have had about 6 electoral votes, as many as each of those three. Spain ceded the island under the 1898 Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War, and the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 made Puerto Ricans US citizens. They have served in the US armed forces ever since.

The official name is the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Estado Libre Asociado in Spanish, but in law the island is an unincorporated territory. It has voted on its status seven times: 1967, 1993, 1998, 2012, 2017, 2020 and 2024. Statehood came first in the last four, with 58.6 percent in November 2024, but only Congress can admit a state. The Puerto Rico Status Act (HR 8393), which would have held a binding vote between statehood, independence and free association, passed the House in December 2022 and died in the Senate.

Guam, the US outpost in the western Pacific

Guam is about 30 miles long and 4 to 12 miles wide, the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands. It lies closer to Tokyo and Manila than to Honolulu, and Andersen Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam make it a major US military hub in the western Pacific: the armed forces hold about a quarter of the island. Spain ceded it under the same 1898 Treaty of Paris. Japan occupied it from December 1941 to July 1944, and July 21 is still Liberation Day.

The Chamorro are Guam's indigenous people. The Organic Act of 1950 made Guamanians US citizens and gave the island an elected legislature, today 15 senators, and Guam has elected its own governor since 1970.

The US Virgin Islands, bought from Denmark

In 1917 the United States paid Denmark 25 million dollars in gold for the Danish West Indies, which makes them the only one of today's inhabited territories that the United States bought. The aim was to keep the islands, which overlook the sea routes to the Panama Canal, out of German hands during World War I. Denmark had held St. Thomas since 1672.

The three main islands are St. Croix, the largest at about 84 square miles, St. Thomas, home of the capital Charlotte Amalie, and St. John, about 60 percent of it a national park. Residents became US citizens in 1927. Traffic keeps left, as it already did when the islands were bought, which makes the territory the only place under the US flag where cars drive on the left, most of them American models with the wheel on the left.

American Samoa, nationals rather than citizens

American Samoa is the only territory where people born there are US nationals, not citizens. They carry US passports, can live and work anywhere in the country and serve in the military, but cannot vote in federal or state elections, even after moving to a state, until they naturalize. In 2022 the Supreme Court declined to hear Fitisemanu v. United States, which asked for citizenship at birth. Many Samoan leaders oppose that change, fearing it could expose fa'a Samoa, the customary system under which about 90 percent of the land is held communally by Samoan families, to court challenges.

Tutuila was ceded by its chiefs in 1900 and the Manu'a Islands in 1904, after the 1899 Tripartite Convention split the archipelago between the United States and Germany. The western islands, ruled by Germany and then New Zealand, became the independent country of Samoa in 1962. American Samoa is the only inhabited US territory south of the equator, and it enlists in the US military at one of the highest rates of any state or territory.

The Northern Mariana Islands, the last to join

US forces took Saipan and Tinian from Japan in 1944. After the war the islands north of Guam became part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a UN trusteeship run by the United States. In 1975 their voters approved a covenant of political union with the US; the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) set up its own government in 1978, and its people became US citizens in 1986, when the trusteeship ended for them. Saipan, Tinian and Rota are the main inhabited islands of the 14. Both atomic bomb missions of August 1945, against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, took off from Tinian.

The CNMI controlled its own immigration until a 2008 federal law placed the islands under US immigration rules from 2009.

The 9 uninhabited territories

The United States Minor Outlying Islands have no permanent civilian population, only researchers, wildlife staff or military contractors on a few of them:

• Midway Atoll, in the North Pacific: the Battle of Midway was fought off it in June 1942. It is now a national wildlife refuge.
• Wake Island, between Hawaii and Guam: an airfield run by the Air Force. The Marshall Islands claim it too.
• Palmyra Atoll, south of Hawaii: the only incorporated territory, where the Constitution applies in full. It was left out when Hawaii became a state in 1959, and The Nature Conservancy bought it from the family that owned it in 2000.
• Johnston Atoll and Howland, Baker and Jarvis islands, in the central Pacific: claimed in the 1850s for their guano, under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. Amelia Earhart was flying to Howland when she disappeared in 1937.
• Kingman Reef, just north of Palmyra: claimed in 1860 though it had no guano, and annexed in 1922.
• Navassa Island, in the Caribbean between Jamaica and Haiti: claimed under the same act in 1857, and claimed by Haiti as well.

Some lists count 11, adding Bajo Nuevo Bank and Serranilla Bank, two Caribbean reefs the United States claims but Colombia administers.

And Washington, DC?

Neither a state nor a territory. The Constitution provides for a federal district under the authority of Congress, so that the capital sits inside no state. DC has had three electoral votes since 1961, one non-voting House delegate and no senator. Unlike most territory residents, its people pay federal income tax, which is why its license plates read "End Taxation Without Representation". When Americans speak of "the 51st state" they usually mean DC or Puerto Rico: the House passed a DC statehood bill in 2020 and again in 2021, and the Senate never voted on it.

Former territories, and places that never were

The Philippines, ceded by Spain in 1898 with Puerto Rico and Guam, was a US territory until its independence in 1946. The United States ran the Panama Canal Zone from 1904 to 1979 and the canal itself until the last day of 1999; Panama is an independent country. Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, once part of the same UN trusteeship as the Northern Marianas, chose independence in free association with the United States. And 31 of the 50 states were territories themselves before they joined the Union.

Apart from the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico's Caribbean neighbors are not American: the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas are independent countries, and the Virgin Islands just northeast of St. John, Tortola and Virgin Gorda among them, are British.

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