Western United States

==Culture==
[[File:Newspaperrock.jpg|thumb|[[Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument]], [[Utah]], contains petroglyphs left by the first inhabitants of the American Southwest.]]
[[Image:BuildingAdventureGalley.jpg|thumb|The [[American pioneer|pioneers]] were among the earliest European Americans to settle in the western frontier.]]

Historically, the traditional culture of the Western United States has been defined by the [[Western lifestyle|cowboys]], [[American pioneer|pioneers]], and [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] who first inhabited the [[American frontier|Wild West]].<ref name="turner">{{cite book|author=Turner, Frederick Jackson|title=The Frontier in American History |chapter = The Significance of the Frontier in American History|year=1920|chapter-url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-h.htm}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|author=Dary, David|year=1989|title=Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries|edition=second|location=Lawrence, Kansas|publisher=University Press of Kansas|page=xi|isbn=978-0-7006-0390-9}}</ref> The sparse geography of the western deserts ([[Mojave Desert]], [[Great Basin Desert]]) and isolated small [[town]]s, combined with the broad freeways ([[U.S. Route 66]]) and long railroads ([[First transcontinental railroad]]), have contributed to the popular image of the west as a desolate, open space full of unending roads.<ref name="Nugent1992"/>

Facing both the Pacific Ocean and the [[Mexico|Mexican]] border, the West has been shaped by a variety of ethnic groups. [[Hawaii]] is the only state in the union in which [[Asian Americans]] outnumber [[White Americans|white American]] residents. People from many countries in Asia settled in [[California]] and other coastal states in several waves of immigration since the 19th century, contributing to the [[Gold rush]], the building of the transcontinental railroad, agriculture, and more recently, high technology.

The border states—[[California]], [[Arizona]], [[New Mexico]], and [[Texas]]—and other southwestern states such as [[Colorado]], [[Utah]], and [[Nevada]] all have large [[Hispanic]] populations, and the many [[Spanish language|Spanish]] place names attest to their history as former Spanish and Mexican territories. [[Mexican Americans|Mexican-Americans]] have also had a growing population in Northwestern states of [[Oregon]] and [[Washington (state)|Washington]], as well as the southern states of [[Texas]] and [[Oklahoma]].
[[File:Hollywood-Sign.jpg|thumb|The [[Hollywood sign]] in the [[Hollywood Hills]], has come to represent the [[American film industry]].]]

In the [[West Coast of the United States|Pacific States]], the wide areas filled with small towns, farms, and forests are supplemented by a few big port cities which have evolved into world centers for the media and technology industries. Now the second largest city in the nation, [[Los Angeles]] is best known as the home of the [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] [[film]] industry; the area around [[Los Angeles]] also was a major center for the [[aerospace]] industry by [[World War II]], though Boeing, located in [[Washington (state)|Washington state]] would lead the aerospace industry. Fueled by the growth of [[Los Angeles]], as well as the [[San Francisco Bay area]], including [[Silicon Valley]], the center of America's high tech industry, [[California]] has become the most populous of all the 50 states. [[Oregon]] and [[Washington (state)|Washington]] have also seen rapid growth with the rise of [[Boeing]] and [[Microsoft]] along with agriculture and resource based industries.

[[Alaska]]—the northernmost state in the Union—is a vast land of few people, many of them native, and of great stretches of wilderness, protected in [[national park]]s and [[wildlife refuge]]s. Hawaii's location makes it a major gateway between the United States and Asia, as well as a center for tourism.

The [[Mountain States]] subregion includes [[Arizona]], [[Colorado]], [[Idaho]], [[Montana]], [[Nevada]], [[New Mexico]], [[Utah]], and [[Wyoming]]. The mountain states have relatively low population densities, and developed as ranching and mining areas that only recently became urbanized. Most of them have highly individualistic cultures, and have worked to balance the interests of urban development, recreation, and the environment.

Culturally distinctive points of the mountain states include the large [[Mormons|Mormon]] population in the [[Mormon Corridor]], including southeastern [[Idaho]], [[Utah]], Northern [[Arizona]], and [[Nevada]]; the extravagant [[casino]] resort towns of [[Las Vegas Valley|Las Vegas]] and [[Reno, Nevada|Reno]], [[Nevada]]; and the numerous [[Native Americans in the United States|American Indian]] tribal reservations.