Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The second largest state, Texas, has only 40% of the total area of the largest state, Alaska. Rhode Island is the smallest state by total area and land area. San Bernardino County is the largest county in the contiguous U.S. and is larger than each of the nine smallest states; it is larger than the four smallest states combined.
San Francisco is an extreme example: water makes up nearly 80% of its total area of 232 square miles (601 km 2). In many cases an incorporated place is geographically large because its municipal government has merged with the government of the surrounding county.
The term "United States," when used in the geographic sense, refers to the contiguous United States (sometimes referred to as the Lower 48, including the District of Columbia not as a state), Alaska, Hawaii, the five insular territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and minor outlying possessions. [1]
The population density of the United States is lower than that of many other countries because of the United States' large land area. There are large, sparsely populated areas in parts of the US, like the east-to-west stretch extending from the outskirts of Seattle all the way to Minneapolis , or the north-to-south portion from northern Montana ...
The first documented use of the phrase "United States of America" is a letter from January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort.
The largest state by area is Alaska, encompassing 665,384 square miles (1,723,340 km 2), while the smallest is Rhode Island, encompassing 1,545 square miles (4,000 km 2). The most recent states to be admitted, Alaska and Hawaii , were admitted in 1959.
The contiguous United States ... 2,959,064.44 square miles (7,663,941.7 km 2) is actual land, composing 83.65 percent of the country's total land area, ...
The smallest counties and county equivalents (in the 50 states) are the independent cities of Virginia with the extreme being Falls Church at 2.05 sq mi (5.3 km 2; 1,310 acres). [8] If the U.S. territories are included, the smallest county-equivalent is Kingman Reef, with a land area of 0.012 square miles (3.1 ha; 7.7 acres). [9]