The West Region
The West is one of the four regions the US Census Bureau uses to divide the country, and the largest of them by a wide margin. Thirteen states belong to it, split between the Mountain and Pacific divisions. Roughly 79 million people live across close to half of all United States land area, and it is the only region that spans four time zones.
The 13 states in the West
| State | Capital | Admitted | Division |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona | Phoenix | 1912 | Mountain |
| Colorado | Denver | 1876 | Mountain |
| Idaho | Boise | 1890 | Mountain |
| Montana | Helena | 1889 | Mountain |
| Nevada | Carson City | 1864 | Mountain |
| New Mexico | Santa Fe | 1912 | Mountain |
| Utah | Salt Lake City | 1896 | Mountain |
| Wyoming | Cheyenne | 1890 | Mountain |
| Alaska | Juneau | 1959 | Pacific |
| California | Sacramento | 1850 | Pacific |
| Hawaii | Honolulu | 1959 | Pacific |
| Oregon | Salem | 1859 | Pacific |
| Washington | Olympia | 1889 | Pacific |
How the Census Bureau defines the West
The West is Region 4 in the Census hierarchy, and two of the nine divisions sit inside it. The Mountain division holds Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The Pacific division holds Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. Regions and divisions are two layers of one scheme rather than rival lists, so every Western state belongs to exactly one division.
Two states people expect here are missing. Texas and Oklahoma sit west of the Mississippi, but the Census assigns both to the South, in the West South Central division.
Population, land and economic weight
California holds about 39 million residents, roughly half the regional total and more than any other state. Wyoming is the least populous state in the country. Alaska ranks first in area and covers more ground than Texas, California and Montana combined, while California ranks third. Eight of the thirteen states are landlocked.
Software and semiconductors cluster around San Francisco Bay and Seattle, film and television around Los Angeles, aerospace in Washington and southern California. Wyoming mines more coal than any other state, most of it from the Powder River Basin, and California's Central Valley is among the most productive farming districts in the world. Four Western states charge no individual income tax: Alaska, Nevada, Washington and Wyoming.
The geography that gives the West its shape
Two mountain systems run north to south and set everything else. The Rocky Mountains form the interior spine and carry the Continental Divide through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. Nearer the coast the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range intercept Pacific storms first, and between the two systems lie the Great Basin, the Colorado Plateau and the Columbia Plateau.
That arrangement is why the interior is dry. Air reaches Nevada having already dropped its moisture on the western slopes, which makes Nevada the driest state, and the Great Basin has no outlet to the ocean at all. Mount Whitney in California reaches 14,505 feet, the highest point in the contiguous states, and Badwater Basin in Death Valley sits 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in North America. Fewer than 90 miles separate them. Denali in Alaska, at 20,310 feet, is the highest point on the continent. The Colorado River has been divided among seven states since the Colorado River Compact of 1922.
How the West was settled
Settlement came from three directions rather than one. Spain moved north from Mexico and began the California mission chain at San Diego in 1769. Russia held Alaska until the United States bought it in 1867. American settlers came overland on the Oregon Trail through the 1840s.
Britain and the United States split the Oregon Country at the 49th parallel in 1846, and Mexico ceded California and the Southwest in 1848 under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Gold was found at Sutter's Mill the same year, and California entered the Union in 1850 without ever passing through a territorial stage. The first transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869. Arizona and New Mexico were admitted in 1912 as the last two contiguous states, and Alaska and Hawaii both joined in 1959. Because so much land was never transferred out of the federal public domain, Washington still owns roughly 80 percent of Nevada and large shares of Utah, Idaho, Alaska and Oregon.
What the West is known for
Yellowstone became the first national park anywhere in 1872, and Alaska, California, Colorado, Utah and Washington each hold several more. Las Vegas, in a state whose capital is the far smaller Carson City, turned legal gambling into the region's biggest single tourist draw. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, finished in 1977, carries North Slope crude 800 miles south to Valdez.
Where the boundary is argued
Texas is the loudest case. Its cattle history and self image put it in the West for most people, while the Census counts it in the South. Geographers following John Wesley Powell's 1878 report on the arid lands start the real West near the 100th meridian, a line running through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas that puts their western halves in country the Census never files as Western.
Arizona and New Mexico are almost always called the Southwest in ordinary speech, yet officially they are Mountain states alongside Montana. Nevada is a Mountain state that runs on Pacific time and orients toward California. The Pacific Northwest, as people use the phrase, covers Washington, Oregon and Idaho, straddling two divisions.