1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
Idaho
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Idaho is a state in the northwestern region of the United States. It borders the state of Montana to the east and northeast, Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, to the north, it shares a small portion of the Canadian border with the province of British Columbia. With a population of around 1.7 million people and an area of 83,569 square miles, Idaho is the 14th largest, the states capital and largest city is Boise. Idaho prior to European settlement was inhabited solely by Native American peoples, in the early 19th century, Idaho was considered part of the Oregon Country, an area disputed between the U. S. and the United Kingdom. Idaho was eventually admitted to the Union on July 3,1890, forming part of the Pacific Northwest, Idaho is divided into several distinct geographic and climatic regions. In the states north, the relatively isolated Idaho Panhandle is closely linked with Eastern Washington, the states south includes the Snake River Plain, while the south-east incorporates part of the Great Basin. Idaho is quite mountainous, and contains several stretches of the Rocky Mountains, additionally, around 38 percent of Idahos land is held by the United States Forest Service, the most of any state. Industries significant for the economy include manufacturing, agriculture, mining, forestry. Idahos agricultural sector supplies a number of different products, but the state is best known for its potato crop, the official state nickname is the Gem State, which references Idahos reputation for gemstones and, more broadly, its many wilderness areas. The exact origin of the remains a mystery. Willing later claimed that he had invented the name. Congress ultimately decided to name the area Colorado Territory when it was created in February 1861, thinking they would get a jump on the name, locals named a community in Colorado Idaho Springs. However, the name Idaho did not fall into obscurity, the same year Congress created Colorado Territory, a county called Idaho County was created in eastern Washington Territory. The county was named after a steamship named Idaho, which was launched on the Columbia River in 1860 and it is unclear whether the steamship was named before or after Willings claim was revealed. Regardless, a portion of Washington Territory, including Idaho County, was used to create Idaho Territory in 1863. Despite this lack of evidence for the origin of the name, the name Idaho may be derived from the Plains Apache word ídaahę́, which means enemy. The Comanches used this word to refer to the Idaho Territory, a 1956 Idaho history textbook says, Idaho is a Shoshoni Indian exclamation. The word consists of three parts, the first is Ee, which in English conveys the idea of coming down
3.
Nevada
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Nevada is a state in the Western, Mountain West, and Southwestern regions of the United States of America. Nevada is the 7th most extensive, the 34th most populous, nearly three-quarters of Nevadas people live in Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area where three of the states four largest incorporated cities are located. Nevada is officially known as the Silver State because of the importance of silver to its history and economy. It is also known as the Battle Born State, because it achieved statehood during the Civil War, as the Sage-brush State, for the plant of the same name. Nevada borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, Nevada is largely desert and semi-arid, much of it located within the Great Basin. Areas south of the Great Basin are located within the Mojave Desert, while Lake Tahoe, about 86% of the states land is managed by various jurisdictions of the U. S. federal government, both civilian and military. Before European contact, Native Americans of the Paiute, Shoshone, the first Europeans to explore the region were Spanish. They called the region Nevada because of the snow covered the mountains in winter. The area formed part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the United States annexed the area in 1848 after its victory in the Mexican–American War, and it was incorporated as part of Utah Territory in 1850. The discovery of silver at the Comstock Lode in 1859 led to a boom that became an impetus to the creation of Nevada Territory out of western Utah Territory in 1861. Nevada became the 36th state on October 31,1864, as the second of two added to the Union during the Civil War. Nevada has a reputation for its libertarian laws, in 1940, with a population of just over 110,000 people, Nevada was by far the least-populated state, with less than half the population of the next least-populated state. However, legalized gambling and lenient marriage and divorce laws transformed Nevada into a major tourist destination in the 20th century, Nevada is the only U. S. state where prostitution is legal, though it is illegal in Clark County, Washoe County and Carson City. The tourism industry remains Nevadas largest employer, with mining continuing as a sector of the economy. The name Nevada comes from the Spanish nevada, meaning snow-covered, most Nevadans pronounce the second syllable of their state name using the vowel of trap. Many from outside the Western United States pronounce it with the vowel of father, although the latter pronunciation is closer to the Spanish pronunciation, it is not the pronunciation preferred by most Nevadans. State Assemblyman Harry Mortenson proposed a bill to recognize the alternate pronunciation of Nevada, though the bill was not supported by most legislators, the Nevadan pronunciation is the de facto official one, since it is the one used by the state legislature. Nevada is almost entirely within the Basin and Range Province, and is broken up by many mountain ranges
4.
Snake River
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The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest in the United States. At 1,078 miles long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River and its drainage basin encompasses parts of six U. S. states, and its average discharge is over 54,000 cubic feet per second. Rugged mountains divided by rolling plains characterize the physiographically diverse watershed of the Snake River, the Snake River Plain was created by a volcanic hotspot which now lies underneath Yellowstone National Park, where the headwaters of the Snake River arise. Two of these flooding events significantly affected the river and its surrounds. More than 11,000 years ago, prehistoric Native Americans lived along the Snake, Salmon from the Pacific Ocean spawned by the millions in the river. These fish were central to the lives of the people along the Snake below Shoshone Falls, by the time Lewis and Clark crossed the Rockies and sighted the valley of a Snake tributary, the Nez Perce and Shoshone were the most powerful peoples in the region. Some tribes adopted use of horses after contact with Europeans, which reshaped their hunting, later explorers and fur trappers further changed and used the resources of the Snake River basin. At one point, a sign made by the Shoshones representing fish was misinterpreted to represent a snake. By the middle 19th century, the Oregon Trail, a trail of which a major portion followed the Snake River, had been established by aspiring settlers and traders. Steamboats and railroads moved agricultural products and minerals along the river throughout the 19th, several of these have been proposed for removal in order to restore some of the rivers once-tremendous salmon runs. Its first 50-mile run through the valley of Jackson Hole, which cuts between the Teton Range and the Continental Divide, there it is also met by the Salt River at the mouth of Star Valley. Southwest of the city of Rexburg, the Snake receives from the right the Henrys Fork, the confluence with the Henrys Fork takes the river southwards through downtown Idaho Falls, rounding the Fort Hall Indian Reservation and into American Falls Reservoir, receiving the Portneuf River. Close to Twin Falls, the Snake approaches the southernmost point in its entire course, after which it starts to flow generally northwest. Shortly after it passes within 30 miles of the Idaho state capital of Boise, there were hundreds of rapids in Hells Canyon, some of which have been stilled by the three dams of the Hells Canyon Hydroelectric Project, Hells Canyon, Oxbow, and Brownlee. The Salmon River, the largest tributary of the Snake River, meets it in one of the most remote areas of its entire course, the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers has been submerged in Lake Wallula, the reservoir of McNary Dam. The Columbia River flows about 325 miles further west to the Pacific Ocean, as recently as 165 million years ago, most of western North America was still part of the Pacific Ocean. Even larger lava flows of Columbia River basalts issued over eastern Washington, forming the Columbia Plateau southeast of the Columbia River, separate volcanic activity formed the northwestern portion of the plain, an area far from the path of the hotspot which now lies beneath Yellowstone National Park. At this point, the Snake River watershed was beginning to take shape, the Snake River Plain and the gap between the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range formed a moisture channel, running as far inland as the headwaters of the Snake River
5.
Tributary
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A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean, tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean. A confluence, where two or more bodies of water together, usually refers to the joining of tributaries. The opposite to a tributary is a distributary, a river or stream that branches off from, distributaries are most often found in river deltas. Right tributary and left tributary are terms stating the orientation of the relative to the flow of the main stem river. These terms are defined from the perspective of looking downstream, where tributaries have the same name as the river into which they feed, they are called forks. These are typically designated by compass direction, for example, the American River receives flow from its North, Middle, and South forks. The Chicago Rivers North Branch has the East, West, and Middle Fork, the South Branch has its South Fork, forks are sometimes designated as right or left. Here, the handedness is from the point of view of an observer facing upstream, for instance, Steer Creek has a left tributary which is called Right Fork Steer Creek. Tributaries are sometimes listed starting with those nearest to the source of the river, the Strahler Stream Order examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of first, second, third, and higher orders, with the first-order tributary being typically the least in size. For example, a second-order tributary would be the result of two or more first-order tributaries combining to form the second-order tributary, another method is to list tributaries from mouth to source, in the form of a tree structure, stored as a tree data structure
6.
Canyon
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A canyon or gorge is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from the erosive activity of a river over geologic timescales. A canyon may also refer to a rift between two peaks, such as those in ranges including the Rocky Mountains, the Alps. Usually a river or stream and erosion carve out such splits between mountains, examples of mountain-type canyons are Provo Canyon in Utah or Yosemite National Park in Californias Sierra Nevada. Canyons within mountains, or gorges that have an opening on one side are called box canyons. Slot canyons are very narrow canyons, often with smooth walls, steep-sided valleys in the seabed of the continental slope underwater are referred to as submarine canyons. Unlike canyons on land, submarine canyons are thought to be formed by turbidity currents, the word canyon is Spanish in origin, with the same meaning. The word canyon is used in North America while the words gorge and ravine are used in Europe and Oceania, though gorge. In the United States, place names generally use canyon in the southwest and gorge in the northeast, in Canada, a gorge is usually narrow while a ravine is more open and often wooded. The military-derived word defile is occasionally used in the United Kingdom, most canyons were formed by a process of long-time erosion from a plateau or table-land level. The cliffs form because harder rock strata that are resistant to erosion, Canyons are much more common in arid than in wet areas because physical weathering has a more localized effect in arid zones. The wind and water from the combine to erode and cut away less resistant materials such as shales. The freezing and expansion of water also serves to help form canyons, water seeps into cracks between the rocks and freezes, pushing the rocks apart and eventually causing large chunks to break off the canyon walls, in a process known as frost wedging. Canyon walls are formed of resistant sandstones or granite. Sometimes large rivers run through canyons as the result of geological uplift. These are called entrenched rivers, because they are unable to alter their course. In the United States, the Colorado River in the Southwest, Canyons often form in areas of limestone rock. As limestone is soluble to an extent, cave systems form in the rock. When these collapse, a canyon is left, as in the Mendip Hills in Somerset and Yorkshire Dales in Yorkshire, England
7.
Lava
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Lava is the molten rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption. The resulting rock after solidification and cooling is called lava. The molten rock is formed in the interior of planets, including Earth. The source of the heat melts the rock within the earth is geothermal energy. When first erupted from a vent, lava is a liquid usually at temperatures from 700 to 1,200 °C. A lava flow is an outpouring of lava, which is created during a non-explosive effusive eruption. When it has stopped moving, lava solidifies to form igneous rock, the term lava flow is commonly shortened to lava. Although lava can be up to 100,000 times more viscous than water, lava can flow great distances before cooling and solidifying because of its thixotropic, explosive eruptions produce a mixture of volcanic ash and other fragments called tephra, rather than lava flows. The word lava comes from Italian, and is derived from the Latin word labes which means a fall or slide. The first use in connection with extruded magma was apparently in an account written by Francesco Serao on the eruption of Vesuvius between May 14 and June 4,1737. Serao described a flow of lava as an analogy to the flow of water. The composition of almost all lava of the Earths crust is dominated by silicate minerals, mostly feldspars, olivine, pyroxenes, amphiboles, micas, igneous rocks, which form lava flows when erupted, can be classified into three chemical types, felsic, intermediate, and mafic. These classes are primarily chemical, however, the chemistry of lava also tends to correlate with the temperature, its viscosity. Felsic or silicic lavas such as rhyolite and dacite typically form lava spines, most silicic lava flows are extremely viscous, and typically fragment as they extrude, producing blocky autobreccias. Felsic magmas can erupt at temperatures as low as 650 to 750 °C, unusually hot rhyolite lavas, however, may flow for distances of many tens of kilometres, such as in the Snake River Plain of the northwestern United States. Intermediate or andesitic lavas are lower in aluminium and silica, and usually somewhat richer in magnesium, intermediate lavas form andesite domes and block lavas, and may occur on steep composite volcanoes, such as in the Andes. Poorer in aluminium and silica than felsic lavas, and also commonly hotter, greater temperatures tend to destroy polymerized bonds within the magma, promoting more fluid behaviour and also a greater tendency to form phenocrysts. Higher iron and magnesium tends to manifest as a darker groundmass, mafic or basaltic lavas are typified by their high ferromagnesian content, and generally erupt at temperatures in excess of 950 °C
8.
Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest
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The Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest is the principal U. S. National Forest in the U. S. state of Nevada, and has a smaller portion in Eastern California. With an area of 6,289,821 acres, it is the largest National Forest of the United States outside of Alaska. HTNF does not resemble most other National Forests in that it has fairly large but non-contiguous sections scattered about most of the state of Nevada. Its 10 ranger districts are scattered across the mountain ranges in Nevada. A part of the forest is in eastern California, in the areas around Bridgeport and Markleeville, the forest lies in 13 counties in Nevada and 6 in California. The counties with the largest amount of forest land are Nye, Elko, and White Pine in Nevada, and Mono County in California, Forest headquarters are located in Sparks, Nevada. It has about 43. 5% of the total area, there are local ranger district offices located in Ely, Elko, Wells, and Winnemucca. It has about 56. 5% of the total area, there are local ranger district offices located in Austin, Bridgeport, Carson City, Las Vegas, and Tonopah
9.
Snake River Plain
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The Snake River Plain is a geologic feature located primarily within the U. S. state of Idaho. It stretches about 400 miles westward from northwest of the state of Wyoming to the Idaho-Oregon border, the plain is a wide, flat bow-shaped depression and covers about a quarter of Idaho. Three major volcanic buttes dot the plain east of Arco, the largest being Big Southern Butte, most of Idahos major cities are in the Snake River Plain, as is much of its agricultural land. The Snake River Plain can be divided into three sections, western, central, and eastern, the western plain began to form around 11–12 Ma with the eruption of rhyolite lavas and ignimbrites. The western plain is not parallel to North American Plate motion and lies at an angle to the central. Its morphology is similar to other volcanic plateaus such as the Chilcotin Group in south-central British Columbia, the eastern Snake River Plain traces the path of the North American Plate over the Yellowstone hotspot, now centered in Yellowstone National Park. The eastern plain is a depression that cuts across Basin and Range mountain structures. It is underlain almost entirely by basalt erupted from large shield volcanoes, beneath the basalts are rhyolite lavas and ignimbrites that erupted as the lithosphere passed over the hotspot. The central Snake River plain is similar to the plain but differs by having thick sections of interbedded lacustrine and fluvial sediments. Island Park and Yellowstone Calderas formed as the result of enormous rhyolite ignimbrite eruptions, henrys Fork Caldera, measuring 18 miles by 23 miles, may be the largest symmetrical caldera in the world. The caldera formed when a dome of magma built up and then drained away, the center of the dome collapsed, leaving a caldera. Henrys Fork Caldera lies within the older and larger Island Park Caldera, younger volcanoes that erupted after passing over the hotspot covered the plain with young basalt lava flows in places, including Craters of the Moon National Monument. The Snake River Plain has a significant effect on the climate of Yellowstone National Park, over time, the Yellowstone hotspot left a 70-mile wide channel through the Rocky Mountains. This channel is in line with the gap between the Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada, the result is a moisture channel extending from the Pacific Ocean to Yellowstone. Moisture from the Pacific Ocean streams onshore in the form of clouds, the result is a localized climate on the eastern side of the Rockies that is akin to a climate on the west slope of the Cascades or the northern Sierras. Lost streams of Idaho Snake River Snake River Plain Wilson Butte Cave The Snake River Plain Snake River Plain at Digital Atlas of Idaho
10.
Shoshone
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The Shoshone were sometimes called the Snake Indians by neighboring tribes and early American explorers. Their peoples have become members of recognized tribes throughout their traditional areas of settlement, often colocated with the Paiute. The name Shoshone comes from Sosoni, a Shoshone word for high-growing grasses, some neighboring tribes call the Shoshone Grass House People, based on their traditional homes made from soshoni. Shoshones call themselves Newe, meaning People, meriwether Lewis recorded the tribe as the Sosonees or snake Indians in 1805. The Shoshoni language is spoken by approximately 1,000 people today and it belongs to the Central Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Speakers are scattered from central Nevada to central Wyoming, the largest numbers of Shoshoni speakers live on the federally recognized Duck Valley Indian Reservation, located on the border of Nevada and Idaho, and Goshute Reservation in Utah. Idaho State University also offers Shoshoni-language classes, the Shoshone are a Native American tribe, who originated in the western Great Basin and spread north and east into present-day Idaho and Wyoming. By 1500, some Eastern Shoshone had crossed the Rocky Mountains into the Great Plains, after 1750, warfare and pressure from the Blackfoot, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho pushed Eastern Shoshone south and westward. Some of them moved as far south as Texas, emerging as the Comanche by 1700, as more European-American settlers migrated west, tensions rose with the indigenous people over competition for territory and resources. Wars occurred throughout the half of the 19th century. The Northern Shoshone, led by Chief Pocatello, fought during the 1860s with settlers in Idaho, as more settlers encroached on Shoshone hunting territory, the natives raided farms and ranches for food, and attacked immigrants. The warfare resulted in the Bear River Massacre, when US forces attacked and killed an estimated 410 Northwestern Shoshone, a large number of the dead were civilians, including women and children, deliberately killed by the soldiers. This was the highest number of deaths which the Shoshone suffered at the hands of United States forces, allied with the Bannock, to whom they were related, the Shoshone fought against the United States in the Snake War from 1864 to 1868. They fought US forces together in 1878 in the Bannock War, in 1876, by contrast, the Shoshone fought alongside the U. S. Army in the Battle of the Rosebud against their traditional enemies, the Lakota and Cheyenne. In 1879 a band of approximately 300 Eastern Shoshone became involved in the Sheepeater Indian War and it was the last Indian war fought in the Pacific Northwest region of the present-day United States. In 1911 a small group of Bannock under a leader named Mike Daggett, also known as Shoshone Mike, killed four ranchers in Washoe County, the settlers formed a posse and went out after the Native Americans. They caught up with the Bannock band on February 26,1911 and they lost one man of the posse, Ed Hogle. The posse captured three children and a woman, a rancher donated the partial remains of three adult males, two adult females, two adolescent males, and three children to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC for study
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