Contiguous United States
The contiguous United States or the conterminous United States consists of the 48 adjoining U. S. states on the continent of North America. The terms exclude the non-contiguous states of Alaska and Hawaii, all other off-shore insular areas; these differ from the related term continental United States which includes Alaska but excludes Hawaii and insular territories. The greatest distance within the 48 contiguous states is 2,802 miles. Together, the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia occupy a combined area of 3,119,884.69 square miles. Of this area, 2,959,064.44 square miles is contiguous land, composing 83.65% of total U. S. land area, similar to the area of Australia. 160,820.25 square miles of the contiguous United States is water area, composing 62.66% of the nation's total water area. The contiguous United States would be placed 5th in the list of sovereign states and dependencies by area. Brazil is the only country, larger in total area than the contiguous United States, but smaller than the entire United States, while Russia and China are the only three countries larger than both.
The 2010 census population of this area was 306,675,006, comprising 99.33% of the nation's population, a density of 103.639 inhabitants/sq mi, compared to 87.264/sq mi for the nation as a whole. The contiguous United States does not include overseas U. S. territories such as American Samoa, U. S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico, the latter of which has a higher population than Alaska and Hawaii. While conterminous U. S. has the precise meaning of contiguous U. S. other terms used to describe the 48 contiguous states have a greater degree of ambiguity. Because Alaska is on the North American continent, the term continental United States includes that state, so the term is qualified with the explicit inclusion of Alaska to resolve any ambiguity. On May 14, 1959, the United States Board on Geographic Names issued the following definitions based on the reference in the Alaska Omnibus Bill, which defined the continental United States as "the 49 States on the North American Continent and the District of Columbia..."
The Board reaffirmed these definitions on May 13, 1999. However before Alaska became a state, it was properly included within the continental U. S. due to being an incorporated territory. CONUS, a technical term used by the U. S. Department of Defense, General Services Administration, NOAA/National Weather Service, others, has been defined both as the continental United States, as the 48 contiguous states; the District of Columbia is not always mentioned as being part of CONUS. OCONUS is derived from CONUS with O for outside added, thus referring to Outside of Continental United States; the term lower 48 is used to refer to the conterminous United States. The National Geographic style guide recommends the use of contiguous or conterminous United States instead of lower 48 when the 48 states are meant, unless used in the context of Alaska. During World War II, the first four numbered Air Forces of the United States Army Air Forces were said to be assigned to the Zone of the Interior by the American military organizations of the time—the future states of Alaska and Hawaii each only organized incorporated territories of the Union, were covered by the Eleventh Air Force and Seventh Air Force during the war.
Alaskans and non-continental territories have unique labels for the contiguous United States because of their own locations relative to them. Alaska became the 49th state of the United States on January 3, 1959. Alaska is on the northwest end of the North American continent, but separated from the rest of the United States Pacific coast by the Canadian province of British Columbia. In Alaska, given the ambiguity surrounding the usage of continental, the term "continental United States" is unheard of when referring to the contiguous 48 states. Several other terms have been used over the years; the term Lower 48 has, for many years, been a common Alaskan equivalent for "contiguous United States". Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States on August 21, 1959, it is the southernmost and so far, the latest state to join the Union. Not part of any continent, Hawaii is located in the Pacific Ocean, about 2,200 miles from North America and halfway to Asia. In Hawaii and overseas American territories, for instance, the terms the Mainland or U.
S. Mainland are used to refer to the contiguous United States. Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the northeast Caribbean Sea 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, Florida. Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico are free to move to the mainland. A Stateside Puerto Rican is a term for residents in a U. S. state who were trace family ancestry to Puerto Rico. Apart from off-shore US islands, a few continental portions of the contiguous US are accessible by road only by traveling through Canada. Point Roberts, Washington. Alburgh, Vermont, is not directly connected by land, but
California
California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U. S. the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento; the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 9.7 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, the country's second most populous, after New York City. California has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, its largest county by area, San Bernardino County; the City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. California's $3.0 trillion economy is larger than that of any other state, larger than those of Texas and Florida combined, the largest sub-national economy in the world. If it were a country, California would be the 5th largest economy in the world, the 36th most populous as of 2017.
The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies, after the New York metropolitan area. The San Francisco Bay Area PSA had the nation's highest GDP per capita in 2017 among large PSAs, is home to three of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people. California is considered a global trendsetter in popular culture, innovation and politics, it is considered the origin of the American film industry, the hippie counterculture, fast food, the Internet, the personal computer, among others. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are seen as global centers of the technology and entertainment industries, respectively. California has a diverse economy: 58% of the state's economy is centered on finance, real estate services and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.
S. state. California is bordered by Oregon to the north and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; the state's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east, from the redwood–Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. Although California is well-known for its warm Mediterranean climate, the large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains. Over time and wildfires have become more pervasive features. What is now California was first settled by various Native Californian tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries; the Spanish Empire claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its successful war for independence but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War.
The western portion of Alta California was organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850. The California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom; the word California referred to the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico. The name derived from the mythical island California in the fictional story of Queen Calafia, as recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo; this work was the fifth in a popular Spanish chivalric romance series that began with Amadis de Gaula. Queen Calafia's kingdom was said to be a remote land rich in gold and pearls, inhabited by beautiful black women who wore gold armor and lived like Amazons, as well as griffins and other strange beasts. In the fictional paradise, the ruler Queen Calafia fought alongside Muslims and her name may have been chosen to echo the title of a Muslim leader, the Caliph. It's possible.
Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, inhabited by black women without a single man among them, they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with great virtue; the island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the craggy rocks. Shortened forms of the state's name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000; the Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups were diverse in their political organization with bands, villages, on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash and Salinan.
Trade, intermarriage a
Antonio de Mendoza
Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco was the first Viceroy of New Spain, serving from November 14, 1535 to November 25, 1550, the third Viceroy of Peru, from September 23, 1551, until his death on July 21, 1552. Mendoza was born at Alcalá la Real, the son of the 2nd Count of Tendilla, Íñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones, Francisca Pacheco, he was married to María Ana de Trujillo de Mendoza. Mendoza became Viceroy of New Spain in 1535 and governed for 15 years, longer than any subsequent viceroy. On his arrival in New Spain, he found a conquered territory beset with Indian unrest and rivalry among the Spanish conquerors and Spanish settlers, his difficult assignment was to govern in the king's name without making an enemy of Hernando Cortés. Cortés himself had expected to be made the permanent ruling crown official of New Spain, since he had led the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire; the Emperor Charles V and the Council of the Indies judged Cortés too independent of crown authority to be made viceroy and had created a high court in New Spain in 1528, appointing Nuño de Guzmán, a rival of Cortés as its president to counter Cortés's power.
In 1530 the crown granted Cortés the title of the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca with multiple encomiendas. With the arrival of Viceroy Mendoza in 1535, Cortés pursued his own economic interests from his palace in Cuernavaca. Although the Spanish had occupied and expanded explorations and settlement in the Caribbean, it was not until the conquest of central Mexico that the crown appointed a viceroy, who would be the king's living image in Mexico and envisioned to assert royal authority in the Kingdom of New Spain. To further cement his authority and establish a solid society he established marital alliances with powerful settlers commited to the development of New Spain, such as Marina de la Caballería. Mendoza's status as a noble and his family's loyalty to the Spanish crown made him a suitable candidate for appointment. Don Antonio and Bishop Juan de Zumárraga were key in the formation of two institutions of Mexico: the Colegio de Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco, where the sons of Aztec nobles studied Latin, rhetoric and music, the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, modeled on the University of Salamanca, which trained young men for the Catholic Church.
These institutions were the first and second universities to be established in the mainland of the Americas. In 1536 he began the minting of copper coins, known as macuquinas. Under his instructions, the first printing press in the New World was brought to Mexico in 1539, by printer Juan Pablos; the first book printed in Mexico: La Escala Espiritual de San Juan Clímaco. On May 18, 1541 don Antonio founded the city of Valladolid; when the Spanish crown issued the New Laws that put restrictions on the grants of elite conquerors awarded grants of labor encomenderos, the viceroy prudently refrained from implementing the most draconian aspects of the edicts, which no longer permitted an encomendero family holding the grant in perpetuity. In Peru, the implementation of the New Laws resulted in outright rebellion and the assassination of the viceroy. Mendoza's policy of obedezco pero no cumplo meant "I respect the authority of the crown, but in my judgment I do not implement particular legislation."In 1542 an insurrection of the Indians, called the Mixtón Rebellion threatened to push the Spaniards out of northwestern Mexico, bringing the area under indigenous control.
The Viceroy himself had to bring all disposable manpower. The rebellion was quashed and the surviving Indians were harshly punished. By the viceroy's order men and children were seized and executed, some by cannon fire, some torn apart by dogs, others stabbed. In 1548 he suppressed an uprising of the Zapotecs; as viceroy, Mendoza commissioned the expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado to explore and establish settlements in the northern lands of New Spain in 1540-42, the expedition of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo to explore the western coastline of Alta California in 1542-43, the expedition of Ruy López de Villalobos to the Philippines in 1542-43. The Codex Mendoza is named for him, he commissioned it. During his term of office, Mendoza is credited with consolidating the sovereignty of the Crown throughout the Spanish conquests in New Spain and limiting the power and ambition of the first conquistadors. Many of the political and economic policies he established endured throughout the entire colonial period.
He promoted the construction of hospitals and schools and encouraged improvements in agriculture and mining. His administration did much to bring peace to New Spain, he died in Lima. He was succeeded as viceroy of New Spain by Don Luis de Velasco, it is reported that his advice to his successor was: "Do little and do that slowly." On July 4, 1549 in Brussels, Emperor Charles V named Mendoza viceroy of Peru. He traveled overland from Mexico to Panama, by boat to Peru, he arrived and took up his new office on November 25, 1550. However, he soon became ill, died in 1552, his tomb is in the Cathedral of Lima, along with that of the Spanish conqueror of Peru, Francisco Pizarro. Cape Mendocino in Humboldt County, California was named in his honor in 1565. From the cape, Mendocino County, the town of Mendocino, Mendocino National Forest were named in the 19th and 20th centuries. "Mendoza, Antonio de," Enciclopedia de México, v. 9. Mexico City, 1988. "Mendoza, Antonio de," Encyclopædia Britannica, v. 6. Chicago, 1983.
García Puron, Manuel, México y sus gobernantes, v. 1. Mexico Ci
San Francisco
San Francisco the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fourth-most populous in California, with 884,363 residents as of 2017, it covers an area of about 46.89 square miles at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, the fifth-most densely populated U. S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area; as of 2017, it was the seventh-highest income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $119,868. As of 2015, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $154.2 billion, a GDP per capita of $177,968. The San Francisco CSA was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2017, with a GDP of $907 billion.
Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the US, the San Francisco CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2017, at $93,938. San Francisco was ranked 14th in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2018. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, all named for St. Francis of Assisi; the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.
It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, its Chinatown district. San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Gap Inc. Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Reddit, Inc. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Weather Underground.
It is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences. As of 2019, San Francisco is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings; the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís, established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system ended, its lands became privatized.
In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography; the California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849; the promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.
Some of these 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels.
Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory describing the large-scale motion of seven large plates and the movements of a larger number of smaller plates of the Earth's lithosphere, since tectonic processes began on Earth between 3 and 3.5 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of continental drift, an idea developed during the first decades of the 20th century; the geoscientific community accepted plate-tectonic theory after seafloor spreading was validated in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The lithosphere, the rigid outermost shell of a planet, is broken into tectonic plates; the Earth's lithosphere is composed of many minor plates. Where the plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of boundary: convergent, divergent, or transform. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, oceanic trench formation occur along these plate boundaries; the relative movement of the plates ranges from zero to 100 mm annually. Tectonic plates are composed of oceanic lithosphere and thicker continental lithosphere, each topped by its own kind of crust.
Along convergent boundaries, subduction, or one plate moving under another, carries the lower one down into the mantle. In this way, the total surface of the lithosphere remains the same; this prediction of plate tectonics is referred to as the conveyor belt principle. Earlier theories, since disproven, proposed gradual expansion of the globe. Tectonic plates are able to move because the Earth's lithosphere has greater mechanical strength than the underlying asthenosphere. Lateral density variations in the mantle result in convection. Plate movement is thought to be driven by a combination of the motion of the seafloor away from spreading ridges due to variations in topography and density changes in the crust. At subduction zones the cold, dense crust is "pulled" or sinks down into the mantle over the downward convecting limb of a mantle cell. Another explanation lies in the different forces generated by tidal forces of the Moon; the relative importance of each of these factors and their relationship to each other is unclear, still the subject of much debate.
The outer layers of the Earth are divided into the asthenosphere. The division is based on differences in mechanical properties and in the method for the transfer of heat; the lithosphere is more rigid, while the asthenosphere is hotter and flows more easily. In terms of heat transfer, the lithosphere loses heat by conduction, whereas the asthenosphere transfers heat by convection and has a nearly adiabatic temperature gradient; this division should not be confused with the chemical subdivision of these same layers into the mantle and the crust: a given piece of mantle may be part of the lithosphere or the asthenosphere at different times depending on its temperature and pressure. The key principle of plate tectonics is that the lithosphere exists as separate and distinct tectonic plates, which ride on the fluid-like asthenosphere. Plate motions range up to a typical 10–40 mm/year, to about 160 mm/year; the driving mechanism behind this movement is described below. Tectonic lithosphere plates consist of lithospheric mantle overlain by one or two types of crustal material: oceanic crust and continental crust.
Average oceanic lithosphere is 100 km thick. Because it is formed at mid-ocean ridges and spreads outwards, its thickness is therefore a function of its distance from the mid-ocean ridge where it was formed. For a typical distance that oceanic lithosphere must travel before being subducted, the thickness varies from about 6 km thick at mid-ocean ridges to greater than 100 km at subduction zones. Continental lithosphere is about 200 km thick, though this varies between basins, mountain ranges, stable cratonic interiors of continents; the location where two plates meet is called a plate boundary. Plate boundaries are associated with geological events such as earthquakes and the creation of topographic features such as mountains, mid-ocean ridges, oceanic trenches; the majority of the world's active volcanoes occur along plate boundaries, with the Pacific Plate's Ring of Fire being the most active and known today. These boundaries are discussed in further detail below; some volcanoes occur in the interiors of plates, these have been variously attributed to internal plate deformation and to mantle plumes.
As explained above, tectonic plates may include continental crust or oceanic crust, most plates contain both. For example, the African Plate includes the continent and parts of the floor of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans; the distinction between oceanic crust and continental crust is based on their modes of formation. Oceanic crust is fo
Acapulco
Acapulco de Juárez called Acapulco, is a city and major seaport in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast of Mexico, 380 kilometres south of Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semicircular bay and has been a port since the early colonial period of Mexico's history, it is a port of call for shipping and cruise lines running between Panama and San Francisco, United States. The city of Acapulco is the largest in the state, far larger than the state capital Chilpancingo. Acapulco is Mexico's largest beach and balneario resort city; the city is one of Mexico's oldest beach resorts, which came into prominence in the 1940s through to the 1960s as a getaway for Hollywood stars and millionaires. Acapulco was once a popular tourist resort, but due to a massive upsurge in gang violence and murder since 2014 it no longer attracts many foreign tourists, most now only come from Mexico itself, it is the deadliest city in Mexico and the third-deadliest city in the world, the US government has warned its citizens not to travel there.
In 2016 there were 918 murders, the homicide rate was one of the highest in the world: 103 in every 100,000. In September 2018 the city's entire police force was disarmed by the military, due to suspicions that it has been infiltrated by drugs gangs. A health crisis has developed due to large quantities of uncollected refuse building up in the streets; the resort area is divided into three parts: The north end of the bay and beyond is the "traditional" area, which encompasses the area from Parque Papagayo through the Zócalo and onto the beaches of Caleta and Caletilla, the main part of the bay known as "Zona Dorada", where the famous in the mid-20th century vacationed, the south end, "Diamante", dominated by newer luxury high-rise hotels and condominiums. The name "Acapulco" comes from Nahuatl language Aca-pōl-co, means "where the reeds were destroyed or washed away"; the "de Juárez" was added to the official name in 1885 to honor Benito Juárez, former President of Mexico. The seal for the city shows broken reeds or cane.
The island and municipality of Capul, in the Philippines, derives its name from Acapulco. Acapulco was the eastern end of the trans-Pacific sailing route from Acapulco to Manila, in what was a Spanish colony. By the 8th century around the Acapulco Bay area, there was a small culture which would first be dominated by the Olmecs by a number of others during the pre-Hispanic period and before it ended in the 1520s. At Acapulco Bay itself, there were two Olmec sites, one by Playa Larga and the other on a hill known as El Guitarrón. Olmec influence caused the small spread-out villages here to coalesce into larger entities and build ceremonial centers. Teotihuacan influence made its way here via Cuernavaca and Chilpancingo. Mayan influence arrived from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and through what is now Oaxaca; this history is known through the archaeological artifacts that have been found here at Playa Hornos, Pie de la Cuesta,and Tambuco. In the 11th century, new waves of migration of Nahuas and Coixas came through here.
These people were the antecedents of the Aztecs. In the 15th century, after four years of military struggle, Acapulco became part of the Aztec empire during the reign of Ahuizotl, it was annexed to a tributary province named Tepecuacuilco. However, this was only transitory, as the Aztecs could only establish an unorganized military post at the city's outskirts; the city was on territory under control of the Yopes, who continued defending it and living there until the arrival of the Spanish in the 1520s. There are two stories about; the first states that two years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Hernán Cortés sent explorers west to find gold. The explorers had subdued this area after 1523, Captain Saavedra Cerón was authorized by Cortés to found a settlement here; the other states that the bay was discovered on December 13, 1526 by a small ship named the El Tepache Santiago captained by Santiago Guevara. The first encomendero was established in 1525 at Cacahuatepec, part of the modern Acapulco municipality.
In 1531, a number of Spaniards, most notably Juan Rodriguez de Villafuerte, left the Oaxaca coast and founded the village of Villafuerte where the city of Acapulco now stands. Villafuerte was unable to subdue the local native peoples, this resulted in the Yopa Rebellion in the region of Cuautepec. Hernán Cortés was obligated to send Vasco Porcayo to negotiate with the indigenous people giving concessions; the province of Acapulco became the encomendero of Rodriguez de Villafuerte who received taxes in the form of cocoa and corn. Cortés established Acapulco as a major port by the early 1530s, with the first major road between Mexico City and the port constructed by 1531; the wharf, named Marqués, was constructed by 1533 between Diamond Point. Soon after, the area was made an "alcadia". Spanish trade in the Far East would give Acapulco a prominent position in the economy of New Spain. Galleons started arriving here from Asia by 1550, in that year thirty Spanish families were sent to live here from Mexico City to have a permanent base of European residents.
Acapulco would become the second most important port, after Veracruz, due to its direct trade with the Philippines. This trade would focus on the yearly Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade, the nexus of all kinds of communications between New Spain and Asia. In 1573, the port was granted the monopoly of the Manila trade; the galleon trade made its yearly run from the mid-16th century unt
1992 Cape Mendocino earthquakes
The 1992 Cape Mendocino earthquakes occurred along the Lost Coast of Northern California on April 25 and 26. The three largest events were the M7.2 thrust mainshock that struck near the unincorporated community of Petrolia midday on April 25 and two primary strike-slip aftershocks measuring 6.5 and 6.6 that followed early the next morning. The sequence encompassed both interplate and intraplate activity, associated with the Mendocino Triple Junction, a complex system of three major faults that converge near Cape Mendocino; the total number of aftershocks that followed the events exceeded 2,000. The three shocks damaged and destroyed homes and businesses in Humboldt County and injured up to 356 people, but the single largest loss was due to a post-earthquake fire that consumed a business center in Scotia. Accelerometers, in place in the Cape Mendocino area since the late 1970s recorded the event and the readings were moderate to strong, with the exception of the instruments closest to the epicenter, which went off scale a few seconds into the recording.
No surface ruptures were present in the epicentral area, but landslides closed roads and railroad tracks for at least a week while cleanup took place. Discovered was about 1 m of coastal uplift near Cape Mendocino and Punta Gorda; as the largest earthquake in California since the 1989 Loma Prieta event several years earlier, the mainshock caused a non-destructive tsunami that reached the coast, Alaska and Hawaii several hours later. The tsunami was significant not because of its run-up, but because of the speed with which it reached the coast and for how long the waves persisted. Other strong earthquakes have affected the same area, with some that were associated with the Mendocino Fracture Zone, others were intraplate earthquakes that ruptured within the Gorda Plate, but events that are unequivocally associated with the Cascadia subduction zone are infrequent; the northernmost coastal area is one of California's most seismically active regions and, in a 50-year period, the area including the Mendocino Fracture Zone at the southern flank of the Gorda Plate generated about 25 percent of all seismic energy unleashed in the state.
The Mendocino Triple Junction formed 29–30 mya at 31° N when the Pacific-Farallon spreading center approached the subduction zone off the coast of western North America. The Rivera Triple Junction shifted to the southeast to its current position at 23° N. Once the Pacific Plate and North American Plate connected the boundary became that of a transform fault due to the northwestward motion of the Pacific Plate relative to the North American Plate; the San Andreas Fault continues to lengthen to the northwest and the southeast as the two triple junctions continue their transient motion. North of the Mendocino Triple Junction, the Gorda plate is subducting beneath the North American Plate at the Cascadia subduction zone, with a convergence rate of 2.5–3 centimeters per year, but comparisons with other subduction zones have led to a belief that the convergence may be taking place aseismically. The distinct lack of interplate events there has generated contention regarding the zone's seismic hazard, though there are strong indications that substantial historic events have occurred in the Pacific Northwest.
Submerged wetlands and raised marine terraces both illustrate the presence of past events, radiocarbon dating of rock layers has revealed that three seismic events took place in the last 2,000 years, with the most recent event being the 1700 Cascadia earthquake. The Gorda Plate is undergoing a process of intraplate deformation and experiences large intraplate earthquakes that may be the result of north-south compression of the oceanic crust along the Mendocino Fracture Zone; the region near the triple junction experiences high seismicity, with more than 60 earthquakes of intensity VI or greater or magnitudes ≥ 5.5 since 1853. The mainshock in the sequence occurred onshore, 4 kilometers west of Petrolia at a depth of 10.5 kilometers, was among an infrequent number of earthquakes with fault-plane solutions that conveyed evidence of slip at the Cascadia subduction zone. While the focal mechanism indicated slip on a thrust fault striking N.10°W with a shallow dip of 13° to the east-northeast, the rupture most propagated to the west, based on the mainshock location at the southeastern boundary of the aftershock zone.
Investigation of more than 1,200 surveys from the North Coast area led to the assignment of an intensity rating of IX on the Modified Mercalli scale for the region near Petrolia. In opposition to the mainshock, located onshore, the two large strike-slip aftershocks occurred the following morning and were located offshore, 30 km to the west of the main shock within the Gorda Plate. Both shocks were of intensity VIII, occurred at a depth of 20 kilometers, exhibited right-lateral motion. Of the several thousand aftershocks in the sequence, none were found to have occurred on the Mendocino Fracture Zone, but numerous events were located on the eastward projection of that fault; the mainshock's rupture duration was described as a smooth nine seconds, while the two aftershocks had more complex and longer ruptures of 14–15 seconds. That the two strike-slip events followed a thrust event indicated a strong coupling of stresses at the North American and Gorda plate boundaries, underscored
