WordNet
n. the region of the United States lying to the west of the Mississippi River [syn: West]
Wikipedia
The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West, the Far West, or simply the West, traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because European settlement in the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time. Prior to about 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier.
Since then, the frontier generally moved westward and eventually lands west of the Mississippi River came to be referred to as the West. Though no consensus exists, even among experts, for the definition of the West as a region, this article adopts the U.S. Census Bureau's definition of the 13 westernmost states which include the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin to the West Coast, and the outlying states of Hawaii and Alaska.
The West contains several major biomes. It is known for arid to semi-arid plateaus and plains, particularly in the American Southwest – forested mountains, including the major ranges of the American Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains – the massive coastal shoreline of the American Pacific Coast - and the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest.
Usage examples of "western united states".
However, in Indonesia, tropical Southeast Asia, most of subequatorial Africa, and probably in parts of Europe, the hunter-gatherers were replaced by farmers in the prehistoric era, whereas a similar replacement took place in modern times in Australia and much of the western United States.
In the western United States the cattlemen started to protect their immoral holdings with gunfire, but in time the common sense of the townspeople, applied through taxation, defeated them.
It all amounted to complete power outage that lasted three days to over ten million Americans in the western United States, at a time when fear and chaos gripped the entire country.
Nor could food production spring up spontaneously in deserts remote from sources of water for irrigation, such as central Australia and parts of the western United States.
In the former case, the oil had essentially run out, and that country--really a city-state separated from the Kingdom by a causeway--had evolved into the same function that Nevada exercised for the western United States, a place where the normal rules were set aside, where drinking, gambling, and other pleasures could be indulged a convenient distance from a more restrictive home.
In turn, the California system was tied into the transmission grid for the whole Western United States.
A useful convenience for the home, to be sure, but not until a captain in the Royal Dutch Air Force had demonstrated a bright idea two years before had its battlefield utility been proven in secret exercises first in Germany, then in the Western United States.
So far we find only legitimate businesses doing legitimate business transactions here in California and much of the western United States and Canada for many years.
Most of Europe and Asia were on the other side of the globe, out of sight, their fate no different from what they saw happening to eastern Asia and the western United States and Australia.
Most of the western United States, and all but a small proportion of eastern Canada, is presently almost empty of settlers.
It was indeed a dream, a dream of rocket light, made real in the deserts of the western United States, before the eyes of two battered old men from Europe.