What region is the West?

The West is the region of the United States west of the Rocky Mountains, although exact definitions vary, including the Pacific states (California, Oregon, Washington), the Mountain states (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico), Alaska, and Hawaii. The U.S. Census Bureau divides the West into Pacific (California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii) and Mountain (the eight Mountain states) divisions. Total Western population is about 80 million, roughly 24 percent of the U.S. population, with rapid growth especially in the Mountain West.

The West is the largest of the four Census regions by area, covering about 1.8 million square miles, more than half the country's total. Western geography is the most varied of any American region. The Pacific coast features the dramatic redwood forests of California, the rocky coastline of Oregon and Washington, the volcanic Cascades, and the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula. The interior includes the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges, the Great Basin between the Sierra and the Rockies, the Colorado Plateau in the Four Corners area, and the Rocky Mountains themselves. The deserts of the Southwest (Mojave, Sonoran, Chihuahuan, Great Basin) cover vast areas. Alaska contains 17 of the 20 highest peaks in the country and the world's longest mountain range, the Brooks. Hawaii is a chain of volcanic islands in the Pacific.

Major cities include Los Angeles (about 13 million metro, the second largest in the country), San Francisco-Oakland (about 4.7 million), Seattle (about 4 million), San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Portland (Oregon), Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Tucson, and Honolulu. The economic profile of the West includes Hollywood entertainment in Los Angeles, technology in Silicon Valley and Seattle, aerospace, agriculture (the Central Valley of California is one of the world's most productive agricultural areas), oil and gas, mining, ranching, and tourism.

The West's history includes thousands of years of Native presence, Spanish exploration and colonization beginning in the sixteenth century in the Southwest, Russian fur trading on the Pacific coast and Alaska in the eighteenth century, American expansion from the 1840s onward, the Gold Rush of 1848, the Transcontinental Railroad of 1869, the cattle and mining booms, the closing of the frontier by 1890, federal land management of vast public lands, and continued Hispanic and Asian immigration. The West contains most of the federal public lands, including national parks, national forests, and wilderness areas.

Climate ranges from rainforest in the Pacific Northwest to extreme desert in the Southwest, alpine in the high Rockies, Mediterranean along the California coast, tropical in Hawaii, and arctic in northern Alaska. The West's politics, culture, and demographics have grown increasingly important to the country.