The Western States
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| The Western States. |
The West traditionally refers to the region comprising the western most state of the United States.And it includes thirteen states : Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
History & Culture
• Ethnic Groups •
-Hawaii is the only state in the union in which Asian Americans outnumber white American residents.
-Asians from many countries have settled in California and other coastal states in several waves of immigration since the 19th Century.
-The border states (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) all have large Hispanic populations.
-The West also contains much of the Native American population in the U.S., particularly in the large reservations.
-The largest concentrations for black Americans in the West can be found in Los Angeles and Oakland.
-Alaska is a vast land of few people, many of them native.
• History •
If you say Western, people usally thinks about cowboy films, so let’s have a look at the Western States history.
# American Old West
-Major settlement of the western territories by migrants from the states in the east developed rapidly in the 1840s.
-The 1850s were marked by political controversies which were part of the national issues leading to the Civil War, though California had been established as a non-slave state in the Compromise of 1850.
-The history of the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has acquired a cultural mythos in the literature and cinema of the United States . The image of the cowboy, the homesteader and westward expansion took real events and transmuted them into a myth of the west which has influenced American culture since at least the 1920s.
# 20th Century
-By 1890, the frontier was gone.The automobile enabled the Americans to tour the West. So Western businessmen promoted U.S. Route 66 as a means to bring tourism and industry to the West.
-During the latter half of the 20th century, several transcontinental interstate highways crossed the West bringing more trade and tourists from the East, increasing the population.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_United_States
Sara Fornas Martínez, Grupo AA.
Labels: Arizona, California, Culture, Montana, Nevada, Washington, Wyoming
