What ocean is on the west coast?

The ocean on the west coast of the United States is the Pacific Ocean, the largest ocean and the largest single feature on Earth, covering about 63.8 million square miles, larger than all the continents combined and accounting for about 46 percent of all ocean water. The Pacific borders five U.S. states (California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii) and several U.S. Pacific territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and several smaller islands and atolls). The contiguous Pacific coastline runs about 1,293 miles from the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the Washington-Canada border to the U.S.-Mexico border at Imperial Beach south of San Diego. Alaska's Pacific coastline including the Aleutian Islands stretches more than 6,640 miles, and Hawaii adds another 750 miles.

The Pacific separates the Americas from East Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. Major U.S. Pacific ports include San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Portland (on the Columbia River), Seattle, Tacoma, and Anchorage. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together handle about 40 percent of all U.S. container imports, much of it from Asia.

The Pacific is geologically active. The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped band of volcanoes and earthquake zones around the rim of the Pacific, including the Cascade volcanoes in Washington and Oregon (Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens which erupted on May 18, 1980, Mount Hood) and the Aleutian volcanoes of Alaska. The San Andreas Fault in California marks the boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates and produces frequent earthquakes including the famous 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The Pacific has shaped American history and culture. Ferdinand Magellan named the ocean Mar Pacifico (peaceful sea) during his 1520 to 1521 expedition. American settlers reached the Pacific Northwest along the Oregon Trail in the 1840s, the Pacific coast of California through the Gold Rush of 1848 to 1855, and the trans-Pacific arc through the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 and the Spanish-American War of the same year acquiring the Philippines and Guam. World War II in the Pacific from December 7, 1941 to August 15, 1945 produced major battles at Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The Pacific Rim economies of China, Japan, Korea, and others became central to American trade in the late twentieth century.

The Pacific contains American territory at the international date line, including American Samoa and the Howland and Baker islands. The U.S. claims a 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone along its Pacific coastline, including very large zones around Hawaii and the Pacific territories.