The West

New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, California, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii

Major Cities: Los Angeles, California; San Francisco, California; Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Seattle, Washington; Honolulu, Hawaii

Literature: John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver, James Welch, Wallace Stegner, Cormac McCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Raymond Carver

Americans have long regarded the West as the last frontier, but California has a history of settlement older than most Midwestern states. Spanish priests founded missions along the California coast a few years before the outbreak of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, California and Oregon entered the Union ahead of many states to the east.

This view of the Seattle, Washington, skyline shows the Space Needle (left), built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

The West is a region of scenic beauty on a grand scale, ranging from lush forests in the northern portion to vast deserts in the south. The magnificent Grand Canyon is located in Arizona. Monument Valley, the starkly beautiful backdrop for many western movies, is located in Utah and Arizona within the Navajo Reservation, home of the most populous tribe of Native Americans. There are also dozens of other Indian reservations, including those of the Hopi, Zuni, Pueblo, and Apache tribes.

Other famous sights in the area include Devil’s Tower in Wyoming (which you may recognize from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and the Rainbow Bridge in Utah, the world’s largest natural bridge.

In much of the West, the population is sparse, and the federal government owns and manages millions of hectares of undeveloped land in vast national parks, such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, Sequoia, and Death Valley. Americans use these areas for recreational and commercial activities, such as fishing, camping, hiking, boating, grazing, lumbering, and mining.

Parts of the southern area of the West were once part of Mexico. The United States obtained this land following the Mexican-American War of 1846–48. Its Mexican heritage continues to exert a strong influence and the area has a large Mexican-American population.

Now the second largest city in the nation, Los Angeles is best known as the home of the Hollywood film industry. Because of the growth of Los Angeles and the “Silicon Valley” area near San Jose, California has become the most populous state. The regional population is growing rapidly, with Arizona in particular rivaling the southern states as a destination for retirees in search of a warm climate. Las Vegas, Nevada, is renowned as one of the world’s centers for gambling.

In a region often suffering from a lack of water, dams on the Colorado and other rivers and aqueducts such as those of the Central Arizona Project have allowed once-small towns like Phoenix, Arizona, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, to thrive, turning them into metropolises. Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, are famous centers for the arts, especially painting, sculpture, and opera. Water brought from far away has also made possible a wide array of agricultural crops, bringing diversity to the region’s economy.

Alaska, the northernmost state in the Union, is a vast land of few, but hardy, people and great stretches of wilderness, protected in national parks and wildlife refuges. Hawaii is the only state in the Union in which Asian Americans outnumber residents of European origin. Beginning in the 1980s, large numbers of Asians have also settled in California, mainly around Los Angeles.

Westerners are known for their tolerance. Perhaps because so many Westerners have moved there from other regions to make a new start resulting in a mix of cultures, interpersonal relations are frequently characterized by a live-and-let-live attitude. The western economy is varied. California, for example, is both an agricultural state and a high-technology manufacturing state.

The most well known writers from the West are John Steinbeck, whose most famous work is The Grapes of Wrath, and Zane Grey, who was born in Ohio and moved to California. His novels, like Riders of the Purple Sage, presented an idealized version of the Old West.

Western food is characterized by tremendous variety due to the diversity of its populace—Mexican, other Latin American, and Asian cuisines. And, of course, there’s Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, California.