1.
Four Corners Monument
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The Four Corners Monument marks the quadripoint in the Southwestern United States where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. It is the point in the United States shared by four states. When the early territories were formed, their boundaries were designated along meridian, beginning in the 1860s, these lines were surveyed and marked. These early surveys included some errors, but even so, the markers placed became the legal boundaries, superseding the written descriptions of geographical meridians and this includes the Four Corners Monument, which has been legally established as the corner of the four states. The monument where visitors can simultaneously straddle the territory of four states is maintained as a tourist attraction by the Navajo Nation Parks, circling the point, starting from north, the disk reads with two words in each state Here meet in freedom under God four states. Around the monument, local Navajo and Ute artisans sell souvenirs, an admission fee is required to view and photograph the monument. The monument is a popular tourist attraction despite its remote and isolated location, the monument is located on the Colorado Plateau west of U. S. Highway 160, approximately 40 miles southwest of Cortez, Colorado. The monument is centered at 36°59′56. 31″N 109°02′42. 62″W, the nearby community of Teec Nos Pos receives 8.46 inches of rain and 2 inches of snow annually. The area now called Four Corners was initially American Indian land, the first boundary which would become part of the monument was set as part of the Compromise of 1850, which created the New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory. The border between the two territories was defined as the 37th parallel north by the 31st United States Congress. In 1861, the 36th United States Congress transferred land previously allocated to the Utah Territory, the Colorado Territorys southern border would remain as the 37th parallel north, but a new border—between the Colorado and Utah Territories—was declared to be the 32nd meridian west from Washington. This line was derived from the used at the time. The group declared secession from the United States and announced their intent to join the Confederate States of America under the name of the Arizona Territory, the U. S. Congress responded in 1863 by creating another Arizona Territory with different, but partially overlapping boundaries. The Confederate boundaries split New Mexico along an east–west line, the 34th parallel north and this would give the Confederacy access to California and the Pacific coast. The Union definition split New Mexico along a line, the 32nd meridian west from Washington. The Union plan eventually became reality, and this created the quadripoint at the modern Four Corners, after the split, New Mexico resembled its modern form, with only slight differences. After the Civil War, efforts began to survey and mark the actual borders, in 1868, the General Land Office had Ehud N. Darling survey and set markers along the border between the Colorado and New Mexico Territories, this border has become known as the Darling Line. In 1875, another GLO surveyor, Chandler Robbins, surveyed and marked the border between the Arizona and New Mexico Territories, Robbins began near the Mexico–United States border, and worked his way north marking the border every so often
2.
False color
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False color refers to a group of color rendering methods used to display images in color which were recorded in the visible or non-visible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. A false-color image is an image that depicts an object in colors that differ from those a photograph would show, to understand false color, a look at the concept behind true color is helpful. An image is called an image when it offers a natural color rendition. When applied to images, true-color means that the perceived lightness of a subject is preserved in its depiction. There are three sources of color error, Different spectral sensitivities of the human eye and of an image capture device. Different spectral emissions / reflections of the object and of the image render process, differences in spectral irradiance in the case of reflective images or reflective objects – see color rendering index for details. Color management can be used to mitigate this problem within the physical constraints, while a false-color image can be created using solely the visual spectrum, typically some or all data used is from electromagnetic radiation outside the visual spectrum. The choice of bands is governed by the physical properties of the object under investigation. As the human eye uses three spectral bands, three bands are commonly combined into a false-color image. In contrast, an image made from one spectral band. For true color, the RGB channels from the camera are mapped to the corresponding RGB channels of the image, for false color this relationship is changed. The simplest false-color encoding is to take an RGB image in the visible spectrum, for traditional false-color satellite images of Earth a NRG→RGB mapping is used, with N being the near-infrared spectral band – this yields the typical vegetation in red false-color images. False color is used for satellite and space images, Examples are remote sensing satellites, some spacecraft, with rovers being the most prominent examples, have the ability to capture approximate true-color images as well. Weather satellites produce, in contrast the spacecrafts mentioned previously, grayscale images from the visible or infrared spectrum, a pseudocolor image is derived from a grayscale image by mapping each intensity value to a color according to a table or function. Pseudo color is used when a single channel of data is available. A typical example for the use of color is thermography. Pseudocoloring can make some more visible, as the perceived difference in color space is bigger than between successive gray levels alone. A further application of pseudocoloring is to store the results of image elaboration, density slicing, a variation of pseudo color, divides an image into a few colored bands and is used in the analysis of remote sensing images
3.
Navajo
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The Navajo are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. After the Cherokee, they are the second-largest federally recognized tribe in the United States, the Navajo language is spoken throughout the region, with most Navajos speaking English, as well. The states with the largest Navajo populations are Arizona and New Mexico, over three-quarters of the Navajo population reside in these two states. The Navajos are speakers of a Na-Dené Southern Athabaskan language known within the language as Diné bizaad, the language comprises two geographic, mutually intelligible dialects. It is closely related to the Apache language, as the Navajos and Apaches are believed to have migrated from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska, speakers of various other Athabaskan languages located in Canada may still comprehend the Navajo language despite the geographic and linguistic deviation of the languages. Additionally, some Navajos speak Navajo Sign Language, which is either a dialect or daughter of Plains Sign Talk, archaeological and historical evidence suggests the Athabaskan ancestors of the Navajos and Apaches entered the Southwest around 1400 CE. The Navajo oral tradition is said to retain references of this migration, until contact with Pueblos and the Spanish, the Navajos were largely hunters and gatherers. The tribe adopted crop-farming techniques from the Pueblo peoples, growing corn, beans. When the Spanish arrived, the Navajos began herding sheep and goats as a source of trade and food. Sheep also became a form of currency and status symbols among the Navajos based on the quantity of herds a family maintained. In addition, the practice of spinning and weaving wool into blankets and clothing became common, in the 18th century, the Spanish reported the Navajos maintaining large herds of livestock and cultivating large crop areas. Navahu comes from the Tewa, meaning area of cultivated lands. By the 1640s, the Spanish began using the term Navajo to refer to the Diné, during the 1670s, the Spanish wrote that the Diné lived in a region known as Dinétah, about 60 miles west of the Rio Chama valley region. In the 1780s, the Spanish sent military expeditions against the Navajos in the Mount Taylor, the Navajos came into contact with the United States Army in 1846, when General Stephen W. Kearny invaded Santa Fe with 1,600 men during the Mexican–American War. The treaty was not honored by many young Navajo raiders, who continued to steal livestock from New Mexican villages, New Mexicans, on their part, together with Utes, continued to raid Navajo country, stealing livestock and taking women and children for sale as slaves. In 1849, the governor of New Mexico, Colonel John MacRae Washington—accompanied by John S. The treaty acknowledged the jurisdiction of the United States and allowed forts, the United States, on its part, promised such donations such other liberal and humane measures, as may deem meet and proper. While en route to this treaty signing, Narbona, a prominent Navajo peace leader, was killed, during the next 10 years, the U. S. established forts on traditional Navajo territory
4.
Monument Valley
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Monument Valley is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft above the valley floor. It is located on the Arizona–Utah border, near the Four Corners area, the valley lies within the range of the Navajo Nation Reservation and is accessible from U. S. Highway 163. Monument Valley has been featured in many forms of media since the 1930s, the area is part of the Colorado Plateau. The elevation of the valley ranges from 5,000 to 6,000 feet above sea level. The floor is largely siltstone of the Cutler Group, or sand derived from it, the valleys vivid red color comes from iron oxide exposed in the weathered siltstone. The darker, blue-gray rocks in the valley get their color from manganese oxide, the buttes are clearly stratified, with three principal layers. The lowest layer is the Organ Rock Shale, the middle is de Chelly Sandstone, the valley includes large stone structures including the famed Eye of the Sun. Monument Valley is officially a large area includes much of the area surrounding Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. Oljato, for example, is also within the designated as Monument Valley. Visitors may pay a fee and drive through the park on a 17-mile dirt road. Parts of Monument Valley, such as Mystery Valley and Hunts Mesa, are only by guided tour. Monument Valley experiences a climate with cold winters and hot summers. While the summers may be hot, the heat is tempered by the high altitude. Although the valley experiences an average of 54 days above 90 °F annually, summer nights are comfortably cool, and temperatures drop quickly after sunset. Winters are cold, but daytime highs are usually above freezing, even in the winter, temperatures below 0 °F are uncommon, though possible. Monument Valley receives a light snowfall in the winter, however. Monument Valley has been featured in computer games, films. Valley of the Gods Thomas J
5.
Navajo Nation
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This is the largest land area retained by a U. S. tribe, with a total population of 173,667. The original territory has expanded several times since the 1800s. In 2016 under the Tribal Nations Buy-Back Program, some 149,524 acres of land were returned by the Department of Interior to the Navajo Nation for tribal communal use, the program is intended to help restore the land bases of reservations. The executive system manages a large law enforcement and social services apparatus, health services, Diné College, the population continues to disproportionately struggle with health problems, unemployment, and the effects of past uranium mining accidents. In English, the name for the area was Navajo Indian Reservation. On April 15,1969, the changed its official name to the Navajo Nation. This was a period of Native American activism and assertion of sovereignty, in 1994, the Tribal Council rejected a proposal to change the official designation from Navajo to Diné. It was remarked that the name Diné represented the time of suffering before the Long Walk, in Navajo, the geographic entity with its legally defined borders is known as Naabeehó Bináhásdzo. This contrasts with Diné Bikéyah and Naabeehó Bikéyah for the idea of Navajoland. Neither of these terms should be confused with Dinétah, the used for the traditional homeland of the Navajo. It is situated in the area among the four sacred Navajo mountains of Dookʼoʼoosłííd, Dibé Ntsaa, Sisnaajiní, the Navajo peoples tradition of governance is rooted in their clans and oral history. The clan system of the Diné is integral to their society, singer argues in 2007s Government Reform Project. In the mid-19th century, the Navajo were forced from their lands by the US Army following defeat, after they were allowed to return, the Navajo Indian Reservation was established according to the Treaty of 1868 with the United States. Though the treaty had provided for one hundred miles in the New Mexico Territory. This initial piece of land is represented in the design of the Navajo Nations flag by a dark-brown rectangle, as no physical boundaries or signposts were set in place, many Navajo ignored these formal boundaries and returned to where they had been living prior to captivity. A significant population of Navajo still resided along the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers and they had never lived in the Hwéeldi near. The first expansion of the territory occurred on October 28,1878, further additions followed throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. The eastern border was shaped primarily as a result of allotments of land to individual households under the Dawes Act of 1887, the government determined that land left over after all members had received allotments was to be considered surplus and available for sale to non-Native Americans
6.
Flags of the U.S. states and territories
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The flags of the U. S. states, territories and federal district exhibit a variety of regional influences and local histories, as well as different styles and design principles. Nonetheless, the majority of the states share the same design pattern consisting of the state seal superimposed on a monochrome background. The most recent current state flag is that of Utah, while the most recent current territorial flag is that of the Northern Mariana Islands. Modern U. S. state flags date from the 1890s, most U. S. state flags were designed and adopted between 1893 and World War I. Dates in parentheses denote when the current flag was adopted by the states legislature and these are the current flags of the federal district and territories of the United States. Dates in parenthesis denote when the district or territorys current flag was adopted by its respective political body, the U. S. national flag is the official flag for all islands, atolls, and reefs composing the United States Minor Outlying Islands. However, unofficial flags are in use on five of these nine areas, Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island. Maine and Massachusetts have ensigns differing from the flag for use at sea
7.
Arizona
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Arizona is a state in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the Western United States and the Mountain West states and it is the sixth largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix, Arizona is one of the Four Corners states. It has borders with New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, and Mexico, Arizonas border with Mexico is 389 miles long, on the northern border of the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California. Arizona is the 48th state and last of the states to be admitted to the Union. Historically part of the territory of Alta California in New Spain, after being defeated in the Mexican–American War, Mexico ceded much of this territory to the United States in 1848. The southernmost portion of the state was acquired in 1853 through the Gadsden Purchase, Southern Arizona is known for its desert climate, with very hot summers and mild winters. There are ski resorts in the areas of Flagstaff, Alpine, in addition to the Grand Canyon National Park, there are several national forests, national parks, and national monuments. To the European settlers, their pronunciation sounded like Arissona, the area is still known as alĭ ṣonak in the Oodham language. Another possible origin is the Basque phrase haritz ona, as there were numerous Basque sheepherders in the area, There is a misconception that the states name originated from the Spanish term Árida Zona. See also lists of counties, islands, rivers, lakes, state parks, national parks, Arizona is in the Southwestern United States as one of the Four Corners states. Arizona is the sixth largest state by area, ranked after New Mexico, of the states 113,998 square miles, approximately 15% is privately owned. The remaining area is public forest and park land, state trust land, Arizona is well known for its desert Basin and Range region in the states southern portions, which is rich in a landscape of xerophyte plants such as the cactus. This regions topography was shaped by volcanism, followed by the cooling-off. Its climate has hot summers and mild winters. The state is well known for its pine-covered north-central portion of the high country of the Colorado Plateau. Like other states of the Southwest United States, Arizona has an abundance of mountains, despite the states aridity, 27% of Arizona is forest, a percentage comparable to modern-day France or Germany. The worlds largest stand of pine trees is in Arizona
8.
Utah
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Utah is a state in the western United States. It became the 45th state admitted to the U. S. on January 4,1896, Utah is the 13th-largest by area, 31st-most-populous, and 10th-least-densely populated of the 50 United States. Utah has a population of more than 3 million, approximately 80% of whom live along the Wasatch Front, Utah is bordered by Colorado to the east, Wyoming to the northeast, Idaho to the north, Arizona to the south, and Nevada to the west. It also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast, approximately 62% of Utahns are reported to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS, which greatly influences Utahn culture and daily life. The LDS Churchs world headquarters is located in Salt Lake City, Utah is the only state with a majority population belonging to a single church. The state is a center of transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, in 2013, the U. S. Census Bureau estimated that Utah had the second fastest-growing population of any state. St. George was the metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah also has the 14th highest median income and the least income inequality of any U. S. state. A2012 Gallup national survey found Utah overall to be the best state to live in based on 13 forward-looking measurements including various economic, lifestyle, the name Utah is derived from the name of the Ute tribe. It means people of the mountains in the Ute language, according to other sources Utah is derived from the Apache name Yudah which means Tall. These Native American tribes are subgroups of the Ute-Aztec Native American ethnicity and were sedentary, the Ancestral Pueblo people built their homes through excavations in mountains, and the Fremont people built houses of straw before disappearing from the region around the 15th century. Another group of Native Americans, the Navajo, settled in the region around the 18th century, in the mid-18th century, other Uto-Aztecan tribes, including the Goshute, the Paiute, the Shoshone, and the Ute people, also settled in the region. These five groups were present when the first European explorers arrived, the southern Utah region was explored by the Spanish in 1540, led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, while looking for the legendary Cíbola. A group led by two Catholic priests—sometimes called the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the coast of California, the expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. The Spanish made further explorations in the region, but were not interested in colonizing the area because of its desert nature, in 1821, the year Mexico achieved its independence from Spain, the region became known as part of its territory of Alta California. European trappers and fur traders explored some areas of Utah in the early 19th century from Canada, the city of Provo, Utah was named for one, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah was named after Peter Skene Ogden, in late 1824, Jim Bridger became the first known English-speaking person to sight the Great Salt Lake. Due to the salinity of its waters, Bridger thought he had found the Pacific Ocean
9.
Ute Mountain Ute Tribe
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The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe is one of three federally recognized tribes of the Ute Nation, and are mostly descendants of the historic Weeminuche Band who moved to the Southern Ute reservation in 1897. Their reservation is headquartered at Towaoc, Colorado on the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation in southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe are descendants of the Weeminuche band who moved to the Southern Ute reservation in 1897. The use of lands in the Four Corners area, where the Ute Mountain Ute tribe now live, though, most anthropologists agree that Utes were established in the Four Corners area by 1500 C. E. The Ute people were hunters and gatherers who moved on foot to hunting grounds, the men hunted animals, including deer, antelope, buffalo, rabbits, and other small mammals and birds. Women gathered grasses, nuts, berries, roots, and greens in woven baskets, They also processed and stored meat, Ute in the western part of their territory lived in wickiups and ramadas, Hide tipis were used in the eastern reaches of their territory. As a result of American westward expansion, the Utes now possess only a fraction of the land that they once traveled seasonally. The Ute people consist of three populations of people, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation near Fort Duchesne in northeastern Utah, the Southern Ute live on a reservation in southwestern Colorado near Ignacio. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe headquartered in Towaoc, Colorado, the subjects of this article, the Mesa Verde Region, the present day area containing the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe reservation and the Mesa Verde National Park, was the northern most edge of the colonial territory of Spain. Initial exploration of the American Southwest by the Spanish occurred in 1540 and they established their first capital near the pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh, which they renamed San Juan de los Caballeros. In 1626 an account was taken of the Utes by a Spanish scribe in New Mexico, about 1640 the Utes began trading with the Spanish for horses. Spanish traders followed trails to Ute villages and Utes traveled to New Mexican towns, the Utes brought buckskin, dried meats, furs, and slaves to exchange for horses, knives, and blankets. Spanish officials negotiate the first peace treaty with the Utes in 1670, in search of gold, Juan de Rivera made three expeditions between 1761 and 1765 from Taos through southwestern Colorado to the Gunnison River. He did not return with gold, but did trade with Utes. Beset by hunger and illness, the men turned back at Salt Lake Valley, the maps and information provided from the expedition provided useful information for future travel and their route from Santa Fe to the Salt Lake Valley became known as the Old Spanish Trail. The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 established a boundary line between Spanish and United States possessions in the southwest. Spanish territory included the southern plains, a part of the western Rocky Mountains. Even with the boundary, the Spanish did little to maintain their northern borders, when Mexico gained its independence from Spain, the Spanish lands became Mexican land. American fur trappers headed into the frontier in 1811 and encountered the Utes
10.
Colorado
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Colorado is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,540,545 on July 1,2016, the state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28,1861, Colorado is nicknamed the Centennial State because it became a state in the same year as the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado, residents of the state are properly known as Coloradans, although the term Coloradoan has been used archaically and lives on in the title of Fort Collins newspaper, the Coloradoan. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado, Colorado is the only U. S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County, Colorado and this point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state, is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. A little less than one half of the area of Colorado is flat, East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet. The Colorado plains were mostly prairies, but they have many patches of forests, buttes. Eastern Colorado is presently covered in farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches annually, corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. Irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, however, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as agriculture, eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches. Roughly 70% of Colorados population resides along the edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The Front Range includes Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley and other townships, on the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado are the cities of Grand Junction, Durango, and Montrose
11.
New Mexico
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New Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States of America. It was admitted to the Union as the 47th state on January 6,1912 and it is usually considered one of the Mountain States. New Mexico is fifth by area, the 36th-most populous, inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before European exploration, New Mexico was colonized by the Spanish in 1598 Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. Later, it was part of independent Mexico before becoming a U. S. territory and eventually a U. S. state as a result of the Mexican–American War. Among U. S. states, New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanics, the major Native American nations in the state are Navajo, Pueblo, and Apache peoples. The demography and culture of the state are shaped by these strong Hispanic and Native American influences and its scarlet and gold colors are taken from the royal standards of Spain, along with the ancient sun symbol of the Zia, a Pueblo-related tribe. New Mexico, or Nuevo México in Spanish, is incorrectly believed to have taken its name from the nation of Mexico. The name simply stuck, even though the area had no connection to Mexico or the Mexica Indian tribes, Mexico, formerly a part of New Spain, adopted its name centuries later in 1821, after winning independence from Spanish rule. New Mexico was a part of the independent Mexican Empire and Federal Republic of Mexico for 27 years,1821 through 1848, New Mexico and Mexico developed as neighboring Spanish-speaking communities under Spanish rule, with relatively independent histories. The states total area is 121,412 square miles, the eastern border of New Mexico lies along 103° W longitude with the state of Oklahoma, and 2.2 miles west of 103° W longitude with Texas. On the southern border, Texas makes up the eastern two-thirds, while the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora make up the western third, the western border with Arizona runs along the 109°03 W longitude. The southwestern corner of the state is known as the Bootheel, the 37° N latitude parallel forms the northern boundary with Colorado. The states New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah come together at the Four Corners in the corner of New Mexico. New Mexico, although a state, has very little water. Its surface water area is about 250 square miles, the New Mexican landscape ranges from wide, rose-colored deserts to broken mesas to high, snow-capped peaks. Despite New Mexicos arid image, heavily forested mountain wildernesses cover a significant portion of the state, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southernmost part of the Rocky Mountains, run roughly north-south along the east side of the Rio Grande in the rugged, pastoral north. The most important of New Mexicos rivers are the Rio Grande, Pecos, Canadian, San Juan, the Rio Grande is tied for the fourth-longest river in the United States. Tourists visiting these sites bring significant money to the state, other areas of geographical and scenic interest include Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument and the Gila Wilderness in the southwest of the state
12.
Flag of the United States
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The flag of the United States, often referred to as the American flag, is the national flag of the United States. S. Nicknames for the flag include The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, the current design of the U. S. flag is its 27th, the design of the flag has been modified officially 26 times since 1777. The 48-star flag was in effect for 47 years until the 49-star version became official on July 4,1959, the 50-star flag was ordered by the then president Eisenhower on August 21,1959, and was adopted in July 1960. It is the version of the U. S. flag and has been in use for over 56 years. At the time of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the flag contemporaneously known as the Continental Colors has historically been referred to as the first national flag. The name Grand Union was first applied to the Continental Colors by George Preble in his 1872 history of the American flag, the flag closely resembles the British East India Company flag of the era, and Sir Charles Fawcett argued in 1937 that the company flag inspired the design. Both flags could have been constructed by adding white stripes to a British Red Ensign. However, an East India Company flag could have nine to 13 stripes. In any case, both the stripes and the stars have precedents in classical heraldry, Flag Day is now observed on June 14 of each year. While scholars still argue about this, tradition holds that the new flag was first hoisted in June 1777 by the Continental Army at the Middlebrook encampment. The first official U. S. flag flown during battle was on August 3,1777, Massachusetts reinforcements brought news of the adoption by Congress of the official flag to Fort Schuyler. A voucher is extant that Capt. Swartwout of Dutchess County was paid by Congress for his coat for the flag, the 1777 resolution was most probably meant to define a naval ensign. In the late 18th century, the notion of a flag did not yet exist. The flag resolution appears between other resolutions from the Marine Committee, on May 10,1779, Secretary of the Board of War Richard Peters expressed concern it is not yet settled what is the Standard of the United States. However, the term, Standard, referred to a standard for the Army of the United States. Each regiment was to carry the standard in addition to its regimental standard. The national standard was not a reference to the national or naval flag, the appearance was up to the maker of the flag. Some flag makers arranged the stars into one big star, in a circle or in rows, one arrangement features 13 five-pointed stars arranged in a circle, with the stars arranged pointing outwards from the circle, the so-called Betsy Ross flag
13.
Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad
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The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad is a 3 ft narrow gauge heritage railroad that operates 45.2 miles of track between Durango and Silverton, in the U. S. state of Colorado. The railway is a federally designated National Historic Landmark and is designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. The route was opened in 1882 by the Denver & Rio Grande Railway to transport silver. The line was an extension of the D&RG3 ft narrow gauge line from Antonito, Colorado, the last train to operate into Durango from the east was on December 6,1968. The states of New Mexico and Colorado purchased 64 miles between Antonito and Chama, New Mexico, in 1970 and operates today as the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, trackage between Chama and Durango was removed by 1971. In March 1981, the Denver & Rio Grande Western sold the line, some rolling stock dates back to the 1880s. Trains operate from Durango to the Cascade Wye in the winter months, Durango depot was built in January 1882 and has been preserved in original form. William Jackson Palmer was a former Union General who came to Colorado after managing the construction of the Kansas Pacific Railroad into Denver in 1870, prior to the war, he had risen within the ranks of the Pennsylvania Railroad serving as secretary to the president. After arriving in Denver, he formulated a plan to build a 3 ft narrow gauge railroad southward from Denver to El Paso, in 1871, the Denver & Rio Grande Railway began to lay rails south from Denver. The original north-south plans of the D&RG eventually expanded to include extensions throughout the mining country of central. On August 5,1881 the Denver & Rio Grande Railway arrived in Durango, the new town was founded by the D&RG in 1880 chiefly through the talents and organization of General Palmers business partner Dr. William Bell. Construction to Silverton, Colorado began that fall, only 11 months later, the D&RG reached Silverton on July 10,1882. Trains hauling passengers and freight began immediately, eventually, the railroad became widely known as the Rio Grande. The Silverton branch, as it known, struggled under D&RG ownership following the Panic of 1893. Annual snowslides and several major floods on the branch would continue to challenge the railroads ability to survive. After World War II, domestic tourism began to grow across the country, bolstered by national exposure via Hollywood movies being filmed along the line in the late 1940s, the railroad began to see a gradual increase in passenger traffic on the mixed train to Silverton. In 1950, the railroad adorned a locomotive and four coaches with a paint scheme. With this effort, The Painted Train officially started a new era of tourism that continues to this day, by the 1960s, a modernized D&RGW did not see the Silverton Branch as worthy to maintain and a petition was filed with governmental agencies to abandon the route
14.
Heritage railway
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A heritage railway is a railway kept to carry living history rail traffic in order to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Often heritage railways are old railway lines preserved in a state which depicts a certain period, or periods, Heritage railway lines contain historic rail infrastructure that has been substituted or made obsolete in modern railway transit systems. Historical installations, such as hand operated points, water cranes, due to the lack of modern technology, or to a desire for historical accuracy, railway operations can be handled with traditional practices, such as the use of physical tokens. Use of heritage infrastructure and operations often calls for assigning roles based on historical occupations to the railway staff, station masters and signalmen, sometimes wearing period-appropriate attire, can be seen on some heritage railways. Most heritage railways carry heritage rolling stock, but modern rail vehicles can be used to showcase railway scenes with historical line infrastructure, still other heritage railways offer a viable public transit option and can therefore sustain operations with a sufficient amount of revenue from regular riders or government subsidies. Childrens railways are extracurricular educational institutions, where children and teenagers learn railway professions, often they are fully functional, passenger-carrying narrow gauge rail lines. This phenomenon originated in the USSR and was developed in Soviet times. Many sites were called pioneer railways, after the communist youth organisation, the first childrens railway was opened Moscow in 1932, and at the breakup of the USSR,52 childrens railways existed in the country. Even though the fall of communist governments has led to closures of these railways, many preserved childrens railways are still functioning in post-Soviet states, many childrens railways were built on parklands in urban areas. Unlike many industrial areas, typically served by a gauge railway. Child volunteers and socialist fiscal policy enabled stagnant existence for many of these railways, the old childrens railways, which still carry traffic, have often retained their original infrastructure and rolling stock, including vintage steam locomotives. Some have also acquired heritage vehicles from other railways, creating passages for trains up steep hills and through mountain regions offers many obstacles which call for special technical solutions. Special steep grade railway -technologies and extensive tunneling may be employed, the use of narrow gauge allows tighter curves in the track and offers a smaller structure gauge and tunnel size. Pit railways have been an important part of operating an underground mine all over the world, small rail vehicles offer effective transportation of ore and waste rock, as well as workers, through narrow tunnels. Sometimes the trains were the mode of transport in the passages between the work sites and the mine entrance. Often the loading gauge of the railway dictated the cross-section of the passages to be dug, and the tunnel, on many mining sites, pit railways have been abandoned due to mine closure or adoption of new kinds of transportation equipment. Nowadays some show mines exhibit a vintage pit railway and offer a chance to experience a mantrip into the mine, Millennium Underground Railway or M1, built from 1894 to 1896, is the oldest line of the Budapest Metro system and the second oldest underground railway in the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, M1 underwent major reconstruction, the original appearance of the old stations has been preserved
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Bluff, Utah
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Bluff is a census-designated place in San Juan County, Utah, United States. The population was 320 at the 2000 census, Bluff is located at 37°17′1″N 109°33′10″W, in the scenic and very sparsely populated southeastern Utah canyonlands of the Colorado Plateau. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has an area of 22.6 square miles. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Bluff has a semi-arid climate, as of the census of 2000, there were 320 people,135 households, and 75 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 14.5 people per square mile, there were 191 housing units at an average density of 8. 6/sq mi. The racial makeup of the CDP was 62. 50% White,35. 00% Native American,0. 94% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 4. 06% of the population. 35. 6% of all households were made up of individuals and 5. 2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 3.25. In the CDP, the population was out with 25. 9% under the age of 18,8. 8% from 18 to 24,29. 1% from 25 to 44,25. 6% from 45 to 64. The median age was 38 years, for every 100 females there were 102.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 104.3 males, the median income for a household in the CDP was $23,906, and the median income for a family was $30,938. Males had an income of $31,563 versus $14,792 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $13,567, about 22. 8% of families and 21. 9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 27. 7% of those under age 18 and 25. 0% of those age 65 or over. Under the direction of John Taylor, Silas S. Smith, after forging about 200 miles of their own trail over difficult terrain, the settlers arrived on the site of Bluff in April 1880. The town was named for the bluffs near the town site, the town’s population had declined to seventy by 1930 but rebounded during a uranium prospecting boom in the 1950s. With the uranium decline in the 1970s Bluff again declined and now remains a town with about 300 residents
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Comb Ridge
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Comb Ridge is a linear north to south-trending monocline nearly 80 miles long in southeast Utah and northeast Arizona. Its northern end merges with the Abajo Mountains some eleven miles west of Blanding and it extends essentially due south for 45 km to the San Juan River. South of the San Juan the ridge turns to the southwest and is subdued in expression as it extends for an additional 67 km to Laguna Creek 9 km east of Kayenta. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1976 as the only North American location of tritylodont fossils, parts of the ridge in Utah are protected as part of the Bears Ears National Monument. The structure is the expression of a deep fault along the east margin of the Monument Uplift. Traces of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples culture can be found along the part of the ridge where it follows Chinle Wash. The Macomb and Hayden expeditions in 1869 and 1874–1876, respectively, were the first to publish maps, the ridge and adjacent Butler Wash were given their current names in 1884, by P. Holmann. Numerous cliff dwellings are found along the ridge, posey War Trail of the Ancients Anasazi State Park Museum Pueblo III Era Comb Ridge National Park Service
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Quadripoint
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A quadripoint is a point on the Earth that touches the border of four distinct territories. The term has never been in common use—it may not have used before 1964 when it was possibly invented by the Office of the Geographer of the United States Department of State. An early instance of four political divisions meeting at a point is in England, it combined until 1931 the English shires/counties of Gloucester, Oxford, Warwick and Worcester. During that period, the part of West Florida between the Pearl and Perdido rivers was subdivided and allocated partly to the State of Mississippi and partly to the Territory of Alabama. Between 1839 and 1920 there was a quadripoint at the convergence of Belgium, Prussia/Germany, the Netherlands, Moresnet was never truly a country but rather only a neutral territory or condominium of the Netherlands and Prussia, and of Belgium and Germany. Subsequent political changes have restored its quadripartition along municipal lines since 1976, in August 2007 the governments of Zambia and Botswana announced a deal to construct a bridge at the site to replace a ferry. There have been a few international incidents revolving round this particular quadripoint, in 1970, South Africa informed Botswana that there was no common border between Botswana and Zambia, claiming that a quadripoint existed. As a result, South Africa claimed, the Kazungula Ferry, there was actually a confrontation and shots were fired at the ferry, some years later, the Rhodesian Army attacked and sank the ferry, maintaining that it was serving military purposes. Ian Brownlie, who studied the case, wrote in 1979 that the possibility of a quadripoint could not be ruled out at that time. This particular geographical multipoint, though notional since 1908, if not 1891, quadripoints can exist at the meeting of political subdivisions of any type or level. The borders of U. S. counties and towns are defined by survey townships. But of all the quadripoints that exist, the most noted are a few dozen that are situated on international borders, among the international quadripoints, a few general types can be distinguished. In the absence of four-country points, three-country quadripoints are perhaps most significant and these combine two divisions of one country with two other countries. But there also exist merely binational quadripoints—of several varieties, also below, by country, are some quadripoints composed only of primary subdivisions. The Argentine provinces of La Pampa, Río Negro, Mendoza, Río Negro has disputed this since a 1966 resurvey cast the exact boundary convergence into some doubt. Almost all of the India–Bangladesh enclaves were extinguished by the Land Boundary Agreement between the two states, effective after 31 July 2015, which exchanged all first-order exclaves, the following quadripoint was thus also extinguished. The international boundary touched itself at one locations shared by India, additional political subdivision did not appear to result in either case. Its international stature had been intermittent since Mughal times and was a result of the Radcliffe Award of 1947, the international boundary touches itself, without imparting political subdivision, within the commingled municipalities of Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog
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Native Americans in the United States
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In the United States, Native Americans are people descended from the Pre-Columbian indigenous population of the land within the countrys modern boundaries. These peoples were composed of distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups. Most Native American groups had historically preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork, at the time of first contact, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the proto-industrial and mostly Christian immigrants. Some of the Northeastern and Southwestern cultures in particular were matrilineal, the majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural lands for use of the entire tribe. Europeans at that time had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of property rights with respect to land that were extremely different. Assimilation became a consistent policy through American administrations, during the 19th century, the ideology of manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of European-American populations to the west after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands and this resulted in the ethnic cleansing of many tribes, with the brutal, forced marches coming to be known as The Trail of Tears. As American expansion reached into the West, settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Basin, Great Plains and these were complex nomadic cultures based on horse culture and seasonal bison hunting. Over time, the United States forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes, in 1924, Native Americans who were not already U. S. citizens were granted citizenship by Congress. Contemporary Native Americans have a relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes. The terms used to refer to Native Americans have at times been controversial, by comparison, the indigenous peoples of Canada are generally known as First Nations. It is not definitively known how or when the Native Americans first settled the Americas and these early inhabitants, called Paleoamericans, soon diversified into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. The archaeological periods used are the classifications of archaeological periods and cultures established in Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips 1958 book Method and they divided the archaeological record in the Americas into five phases, see Archaeology of the Americas. The Clovis culture, a hunting culture, is primarily identified by use of fluted spear points. Artifacts from this culture were first excavated in 1932 near Clovis, the Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and also appeared in South America. The culture is identified by the distinctive Clovis point, a flaked flint spear-point with a notched flute, dating of Clovis materials has been by association with animal bones and by the use of carbon dating methods. Recent reexaminations of Clovis materials using improved carbon-dating methods produced results of 11,050 and 10,800 radiocarbon years B. P, other tribes have stories that recount migrations across long tracts of land and a great river, believed to be the Mississippi River. Genetic and linguistic data connect the people of this continent with ancient northeast Asians
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Hopi
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The Hopi are a Native American tribe, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. According to the 2010 census, there were 19,327 Hopi in the United States, the Hopi language is one of 30 in the Uto-Aztecan language family. The majority of Hopi people are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona, the Hopi Reservation covers a land area of 2,531.773 sq mi. When first encountered by the Spanish in the 16th century, the Hopi, the Hopi are descended from the Ancient Pueblo Peoples who constructed large apartment-house complexes in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. They lived along the Mogollon Rim, especially from the 12th–14th century, the name Hopi is a shortened form of their autonym, Hopituh Shi-nu-mu. The Hopi Dictionary gives the meaning of the word Hopi as, behaving one, one who is mannered, civilized, peaceable, polite. In the past, Hopi sometimes used the term Hopi and its cognates to refer to the Pueblo peoples in general, in contrast to other, Hopi is a concept deeply rooted in the cultures religion, spirituality, and its view of morality and ethics. The Hopi observe their traditional ceremonies for the benefit of the entire world, traditionally, Hopi are organized into matrilineal clans. When a man marries, the children from the relationship are members of his wifes clan and these clan organizations extend across all villages. Children are named by the women of the fathers clan, on the twentieth day of a babys life, the women of the paternal clan gather, each woman bringing a name and a gift for the child. In some cases where many relatives would attend, a child could be given over forty names, the childs parents generally decide the name to be used from these names. Current practice is to use a non-Hopi or English name or the parents chosen Hopi name. A person may change the name upon initiation into one of the religious societies, such as the Kachina society. The Hopi have always viewed their land as sacred, agriculture is a very important part of their culture, and their villages are spread out across the northern part of Arizona. The Hopi and the Navajo did not have a conception of land being bounded and divided and they lived on the land that their ancestors did. On December 16,1882 President Arthur passed an order creating a reservation for the Hopi. It was much smaller than the Navajo reservation, which was the largest in the country, on October 24,1936 the Hopi people ratified a Constitution. That Constitution created a government where all powers are vested in a Tribal Council
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Ute people
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Ute people /ˈjuːt/ are Native Americans of the Ute tribe and culture. They are now living primarily in Utah and Colorado, the Ute are in the Great Basin classification of Indigenous People. They have three Ute tribal reservations, Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah, Southern Ute in Colorado, and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, the majority of Ute are believed to live on one of these reservations. The State of Utah is named after these people, the primary language of the Ute people is English. However, some of the people speak their ancestral Ute language. It is related to the Southern Paiute language and belongs to the Southern subdivision of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, a dictionary and grammar have been written for the language, and the Bible has been translated into Ute. Several orthographies exist, but the language is written in the Latin script, different ideas about the phonetic spelling of many names and some words has caused confusion about the spelling, so many names are often spelled in several different ways. An example is Timpanogos, which has also been spelled as Toompahnahwach, Tumpanuwac, Tumpanawach, Timpanog, Tumpipanogo or Timanogos, from this area, speakers of Uto-Aztecan languages gradually diffused northward and southward. The Ute, Paiute, Shoshone, Comanche and some belong to what is called the Numic subdivision within the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is believed that this Numic group originated near the border of Nevada and California, then spread North, the Numic group is divided into 3 main subdivisions - Southern, Central and Western. Not all of the languages are mutually intelligible, especially those in different subdivisions, Ute and Southern Paiute are Southern Numic Languages, while Shoshone, Gosiute and Comanche are Central Numic, and Northern Paiute and Bannock are Western Numic. The Numic-speaking tribes share many cultural, genetic and linguistic characteristics, many of the tribes met and merged with each other or divided from each other at various times. For instance, the Comanche split off from the Shoshone in about the mid-1600s, since the mid-1800s, some Ute bands merged with Southern Paiute bands to become Paiute. Some possibly Shoshonean tribes, such as the Timpanogos, merged with the Ute and it is also true that there were many times when the tribes did not get along. The name Comanche is from the Ute name for them, kɨmantsi, before Mexican settlers arrived, the Utes occupied significant portions of what are today eastern Utah, western Colorado, including the San Luis Valley, and parts of New Mexico and Wyoming. The Utes were never a group within historic times, instead. Some of the largest known groups were the Capote, Moache, Moanumts, Parianuche, Taviwach, Weeminuche, also the Uintah or Uinta, Uncompahgre tribe and White River Utes. The last partial migration of the Utes within this area was in the year 1885, “In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln signed an executive order establishing the original Uintah Valley Reservation in the eastern part of the Utah territory
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Zuni
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The Zuni are federally recognized Native American Pueblo peoples. Most live in the Pueblo of Zuni on the Zuni River, Zuni is 55 km south of Gallup, New Mexico. In addition to the reservation, the tribe owns trust lands in Catron County, New Mexico and Apache County, in 2000,10,228 people were enrolled in the Zuni tribe. Archaeology suggests that the Zuni have been farmers in their present location for 3,000 to 4,000 years, the village of the great kiva near the contemporary Zuni Pueblo was built in the 11th century CE. The Zuni region, however, was only sparsely populated by small agricultural settlements until the 12th century when the population. In the 14th century, the Zuni inhabited a dozen pueblos between 180 and 1,400 rooms in size, all of these pueblos, except Zuni, were abandoned by 1400, and over the next 200 years, nine large new pueblos were constructed. These were the seven cities of Cibola sought by early Spanish explorers, by 1650, there were only six Zuni villages. In 1539, Moorish slave Estevanico led a party of Fray Marcos de Nizas Spanish expedition. The Zuni killed him as a spy and this was Spains first contact with any of the Pueblo peoples. Francisco Vásquez de Coronado traveled through Zuni Pueblo, the Spaniards built a mission at Hawikuh in 1629. The Zunis tried to expel the missionaries in 1632, but the Spanish built another mission in Halona in 1643, before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the Zuni lived in six different villages. After the revolt, until 1692, they took refuge in a position atop Dowa Yalanne, a steep mesa 5 km southeast of the present Pueblo of Zuni, Dowa means corn. After the establishment of peace and the return of the Spanish, the Zunis were self-sufficient during the mid-19th century, but faced raiding by the Apaches, Navajos, and Plains Indians. Their reservation was officially recognized by the United States federal government in 1877, gradually the Zuni farmed less and turned to sheep and cattle herding as a means of economic development. Frank Hamilton Cushing, an anthropologist associated with the Smithsonian Institution, a controversy during the early 2000s was associated with Zuni opposition to the development of a coal mine near the Zuni Salt Lake, a site considered sacred by the Zuni and under Zuni control. The mine would have extracted water from the aquifer below the lake, the plan died in 2003 after several lawsuits. The Zuni traditionally speak the Zuni language, a language isolate that has no relationship to any other Native American language. Linguists believe that the Zuni have maintained the integrity of their language for at least 7,000 years, the Zuni have, however, share a number of words from Keresan, Hopi, and Pima pertaining to religion and religious observances
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Colorado Plateau
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The province covers an area of 337,000 km2 within western Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, southern and eastern Utah, and northern Arizona. About 90% of the area is drained by the Colorado River and its tributaries, the Green, San Juan. Most of the remainder of the plateau is drained by the Rio Grande, the Colorado Plateau is largely made up of high desert, with scattered areas of forests. In the southwest corner of the Colorado Plateau lies the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, much of the Plateaus landscape is related, in both appearance and geologic history, to the Grand Canyon. The nickname Red Rock Country suggests the brightly colored rock left bare to the view by dryness, domes, hoodoos, fins, reefs, river narrows, natural bridges, and slot canyons are only some of the additional features typical of the Plateau. The Colorado Plateau has the greatest concentration of U. S. National Park Service units in the country outside of the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Among its ten National Parks are Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Arches, Mesa Verde, and Petrified Forest. The province is bounded by the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and by the Uinta Mountains and Wasatch Mountains branches of the Rockies in northern and it is also bounded by the Rio Grande Rift, Mogollon Rim and the Basin and Range Province. Isolated ranges of the Southern Rocky Mountains such as the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, north-south trending normal faults that include the Hurricane, Sevier, Grand Wash, and Paunsaugunt separate the sections component plateaus. This fault pattern is caused by the forces pulling apart the adjacent Basin and Range province to the west. Occupying the southeast corner of the Colorado Plateau is the Datil Section, thick sequences of mid-Tertiary to late-Cenozoic-aged lava covers this section. Development of the province has in part been influenced by structural features in its oldest rocks. Part of the Wasatch Line and its various faults form the edge of the province. Faults that run parallel to the Wasatch Fault that lies along the Wasatch Range form the boundaries between the plateaus in the High Plateaus Section, the Uinta Basin, Uncompahgre Uplift, and the Paradox Basin were also created by movement along structural weaknesses in the regions oldest rock. Some sources also include the Tushar Mountain Plateau as part of the Colorado Plateau, the mostly flat-lying sedimentary rock units that make up these plateaus are found in component plateaus that are between 1500 m to over 3350 m above sea level. A supersequence of these rocks is exposed in the various cliffs, within these rocks are abundant mineral resources that include uranium, coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Study of the unusually clear geologic history has greatly advanced that science. A rain shadow from the Sierra Nevada far to the west, higher areas receive more precipitation and are covered in forests of pine, fir, and spruce
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Mesa Verde National Park
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Mesa Verde National Park is a National Park and World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. It protects some of the best preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States, created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 4,300 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, Mesa Verde is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. Starting c. 7500 BCE, Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rockshelters in and around the mesa, by 1000 BCE, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 CE the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture. The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesas first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, the first occupants of the Mesa Verde region, which spans from southeastern Utah to northwestern New Mexico, were nomadic Paleo-Indians who arrived in the area c. 9500 BCE. They followed herds of big game and camped near rivers and streams, the earliest Paleo-Indians were the Clovis culture and Folsom tradition, defined largely by the way in which they fashioned projectile points. Although they left evidence of their presence throughout the region, there is indication that they lived in central Mesa Verde during this time. After 9600 BCE, the environment grew warmer and drier, a change that brought to central Mesa Verde pine forests. Paleo-Indians began inhabiting the mesa in increasing numbers c. 7500, development of the atlatl during this period made it easier for them to hunt smaller game, a crucial advance at a time when most of the regions big game had disappeared from the landscape. 6000 BCE marks the beginning of the Archaic period in North America, the Archaic people probably developed locally, but were also influenced by contact, trade, and intermarriage with immigrants from these outlying areas. The early Archaic people living near Mesa Verde utilized the atlatl and harvested a variety of plants and animals than the Paleo-Indians had. Environmental stability during the period drove population expansion and migration, by the late Archaic, more people were living in semi-permanent rockshelters that preserved perishable goods such as baskets, sandals, and mats. They started to make a variety of figurines that usually resembled sheep or deer. The late Archaic is marked by increased trade in materials such as obsidian. Marine shells and abalone from the Pacific coast made their way to Mesa Verde from Arizona, Rock art flourished, and people lived in rudimentary houses made of mud and wood
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Chaco Culture National Historical Park
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Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park hosting the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a canyon cut by the Chaco Wash. Containing the most sweeping collection of ancient ruins north of Mexico, between AD900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major center of culture for the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Chacoans quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling fifteen major complexes that remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century, evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the Sun Dagger petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Many Chacoan buildings may have been aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles, requiring generations of astronomical observations, climate change is thought to have led to the emigration of Chacoans and the eventual abandonment of the canyon, beginning with a fifty-year drought commencing in 1130. The sites are considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people, the park is on the Trails of the Ancients Byway, one of the designated New Mexico Scenic Byways. Ancient Chacoans drew upon dense forests of oak, piñon, ponderosa pine, the canyon itself, located within lowlands circumscribed by dune fields, ridges, and mountains, is aligned along a roughly northwest-to-southeast axis and is rimmed by flat massifs known as mesas. Large gaps between the southwestern cliff faces—side canyons known as critical in funneling rain-bearing storms into the canyon. The principal Chacoan complexes, such as Pueblo Bonito, Nuevo Alto, the alluvial canyon floor slopes downward to the northwest at a gentle grade of 30 feet per mile, it is bisected by the Chaco Wash, an arroyo that rarely bears water. The canyons main aquifers were too deep to be of use to ancient Chacoans, today, aside from occasional storm runoff coursing through arroyos, substantial surface water—springs, pools, wells—is virtually nonexistent. A sandy and swampy coastline oscillated east and west, alternately submerging and uncovering the area atop the present Colorado Plateau that Chaco Canyon now occupies. The Chaco Wash flowed across the upper strata of what is now the 400-foot Chacra Mesa, cutting into it, the mesa comprises sandstone and shale formations dating from the Late Cretaceous, which are of the Mesa Verde formation. The canyon bottomlands were further eroded, exposing Menefee Shale bedrock, the canyon and mesa lie within the Chaco Core—which is distinct from the wider Chaco Plateau, a flat region of grassland with infrequent stands of timber. As the Continental Divide is only 15, an arid region of high xeric scrubland and desert steppe, the canyon and wider basin average 8 inches of rainfall annually, the park averages 9.1 inches. Chaco Canyon lies on the side of extensive mountain ranges to the south and west. The region sees four distinct seasons, rainfall is most likely between July and September, while May and June are the driest months. Occasional aberrant northward excursions of the convergence zone may boost precipitation in some years. Chaco endures remarkable climatic extremes, temperatures range between −38 to 102 °F, and may swing 60 °F in a single day, the region averages fewer than 150 frost-free days per year, and the local climate swings wildly from years of plentiful rainfall to prolonged drought
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Canyons of the Ancients National Monument
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Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically-significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U. S. state of Colorado. The monuments 176,056 acres are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of sites in the United States. As of 2005, over 6,000 individual archeological sites had been identified within the monument, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is located 9 miles west of Pleasant View, Colorado in southwestern Colorado. The monuments northern and eastern boundaries are canyons and its western boundary is the Colorado-Utah state border. Lands south are bordered by the Ute Mountain Reservation and McElmo Creek, Ancient Pueblo people lived in the Canyons of the Ancients in the 10th century, Lowry Pueblo, built during the Great Pueblo period, was built atop pit-house built in the 10th century. For a fuller understanding of the architecture and life style during this period, pueblo buildings in the Mesa Verde region were built with stone, windows facing south, the buildings were located more closely together and reflected deepening religious celebration. Towers were built near kivas and likely used for look-outs, pottery became more versatile, including pitchers, ladles, bowls, jars and tableware for food and drink. White pottery with black designs emerged, the coming from plants. Water management and conservation techniques, including the use of reservoirs, as refinements in construction techniques increased, the Puebloans built larger pueblos, or villages, on top of the pit-houses starting about AD1090. Lowry Pueblo had just a few rooms and 2 kivas in 1090, like their ancient neighbors at Hovenweep National Monument and Mesa Verde National Park, the Lowry Pueblo dwellers were farmers and hunters. They grew beans, corn and squash and raised turkeys and they also made and decorated pottery. At least 6,000 distinct structures have been identified in the monument, the vast majority of stone structures in the national monument are from the Ancient Puebloans era. More than 20,000 sites have been identified, in places more than 100 sites per square mile. After building basic pit style structures at first, the Puebloans later built villages with cliff dwellings, Archaeological ruins also include Sweat lodges, kivas, shrines and petroglyphs. Reservoirs with stone and earthen dams, including spillways and also numerous check dams, stone towers which may have been lookout or sentry posts, are found scattered throughout the monument. Unlike other Ancient Pueblo site abandonment, it appears that the people of the Canyons of the Ancients left the much earlier than their neighbors
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Canyon de Chelly National Monument
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Canyon de Chelly National Monument was established on April 1,1931 as a unit of the National Park Service. It is located in northeastern Arizona within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation, the monument covers 83,840 acres and encompasses the floors and rims of the three major canyons, de Chelly, del Muerto, and Monument. These canyons were cut by streams with headwaters in the Chuska mountains just to the east of the monument, none of the land is federally owned. In 2009 Canyon de Chelly National Monument was recognized as one of the national monuments in the United States. The name chelly is a Spanish borrowing of the Navajo word Tséyiʼ, the Spanish pronunciation of de Chelly was adapted into English, apparently through modelling after a French-like spelling pronunciation, and now /dəˈʃeɪ/ də-SHAY. Canyon de Chelly long served as a home for Navajo people before it was invaded by forces led by future New Mexico governor Lt. Antonio Narbona in 1805, in 1863 Col. Kit Carson sent troops to either end of the canyon to defeat the Navajo population within. The resulting devastation led to the surrender of the Navajos and their removal to Bosque Redondo, Canyon de Chelly is entirely owned by the Navajo Tribal Trust of the Navajo Nation. It is the only National Park Service unit that is owned, approximately 40 Navajo families live in the park. Access to the floor is restricted, and visitors are allowed to travel in the canyons only when accompanied by a park ranger or an authorized Navajo guide. The only exception to rule is the White House Ruin Trail. The parks distinctive geologic feature, Spider Rock, is a spire that rises 750 feet from the canyon floor at the junction of Canyon de Chelly. Spider Rock can be seen from South Rim Drive and it has served as the scene of a number of television commercials. According to traditional Navajo beliefs the taller of the two spires is the home of Spider Grandmother, most park visitors arrive by automobile and view Canyon de Chelly from the rim, following both North Rim Drive and South Rim Drive. Ancient ruins and geologic structures are visible, but in the distance, deep within the park is Mummy Cave. It features structures that have built at various times in history. Private Navajo-owned companies offer tours of the floor by horseback. The companies can be contacted directly for prices and arrangements, there is no entrance fee to enter the park, apart from any charges imposed by tour companies. Accommodations for visitors are located in the vicinity of the canyon, on the leading to Chinle
27.
Farmington, New Mexico
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Farmington is a city in San Juan County in the US state of New Mexico. As of the 2013 population estimate from the United States Census Bureau the city had a population of 45,426 people. Farmington makes up one of the four Metropolitan Statistical Areas in New Mexico, the U. S. Census Bureaus population estimate in 2011 for Farmington was about 45,256. Farmington is located at the junction of the San Juan River, the Animas River, and the La Plata River, Farmington is the largest city of San Juan County, one of the geographically largest counties in the United States covering 5,538 square miles. The county seat and the city in San Juan County is Aztec. Farmington serves as the hub for most of northwestern New Mexico. Farmington lies at or near the junction of three important highways, U. S. Highway 550, U. S. Highway 64 and it is on the Trails of the Ancients Byway, one of the designated New Mexico Scenic Byways. The primary industries of San Juan County are the production of petroleum, natural gas, major coal mines are the Navajo and San Juan mines, operated by BHP Billiton 15 to 19 miles southwest of Farmington. The coal mined from the Navajo and San Juan mines is used entirely for fuel for the nearby Four Corners Generating Station, Farmington is known across New Mexico and throughout the southwest for its baseball tournaments, and Ricketts Park is the home of the Connie Mack World Series. Farmington High School claimed the AAAA Baseball State Championship four years in a row from 2005 through 2008, Piedra Vista High School in Farmington also claimed the AAAA Baseball State Championship in 2010 and 2011. The area that is now Farmington was settled by Ancestral Pueblo people in the 7th Century, Ruins can be visited at nearby Salmon Ruins and at Aztec Ruins. When the Anasazi left the area, the Navajos, Jicarilla Apaches, a key part of the region was known in Navajo as Totah, which means where three rivers meet. Although Spanish and American mineral prospecting happened in the area, there were few permanent settlements, in 1868, the Navajo Nation was created, taking up the western half of San Juan County. Six years later, the U. S. government offered territory in the rest of San Juan County to the Jicarilla Apache, as a result, the area was opened for settlement and a number of settlers moved into the region from Southern Colorado. The area was known as Junction City because of the access to the three rivers. In 1901 the town was incorporated and named Farmington with a population of 548, by September 19,1905, the railroad was finished connecting Farmington to Durango, Colorado, expanding economic and settlement opportunities. It was unusual in that it was a standard gauge railroad connected to the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge lines of southwestern Colorado. The railroad converted the line to narrow gauge in 1923, the line was abandoned in 1968 and the line was dismantled to Durango in 1969
28.
Durango, Colorado
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The City of Durango is the county seat and the most populous municipality of La Plata County, Colorado, United States. It is home to Fort Lewis College, the United States Census Bureau reported a population of 16,887 in the 2010 census. The city is a Home Rule Municipality, the town was organized in September 1880 to serve the San Juan mining district. The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad chose the site on the Animas River for its depot following a brief and most likely perfunctory negotiation with Animas City, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.8 square miles. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Durango has a warm-summer, the average annual precipitation is 19.33 in. As of the 2000 census, there were 13,922 people,5,492 households, the population density was 2,052.4 people per square mile. There were 5,819 housing units at a density of 857.8 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 86. 84% White. 5% African American,5. 51% Native American,0. 74% Asian,0. 11% Pacific Islander,4. 12% from other races, and 2. 17% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 10. 31% of the population,31. 8% of all households were made up of individuals and 9. 0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.23 and the family size was 2.83. In the city,16. 6% of residents are under the age of 18,26. 1% from 18 to 24,27. 2% from 25 to 44,19. 4% from 45 to 64, the median age is 29 years. For every 100 females there are 104.1 males, for every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 103.8 males. The median income for a household in the city is $34,892, males have a median income of $31,812 versus $25,022 for females. The per capita income for the city is $19,352,17. 2% of the population and 7. 3% of families live below the poverty line. 11. 2% of those younger than 18 and 8. 9% of those 65, Durango is nestled in the Animas River Valley surrounded by the San Juan Mountains. The Animas River—El Río de las Animas —runs through downtown and boasts gold medal fly fishing waters, Durango is also popular for outdoor activities like hiking, mountain biking, road biking, backpacking, slacklining, rock climbing, hunting, off-roading, year-round fishing, and golfing. Durango is near five major ski areas, including Purgatory, formerly known as Durango Mountain Resort, the city is located thirty-five miles east of Mesa Verde National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site best known for its Ancestral Puebloans cliff dwellings. The annual Durango Ragtime & Early Jazz Festival features noted musicians from around the country and it is held in the Strater Hotel, a historic Victorian hotel in Durango
29.
Arizona Territory
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It was created from the western half of the New Mexico Territory during the American Civil War. These proposals arose from concerns about the ability of the government in Santa Fe to effectively administer the newly acquired southern portions of the territory. The first proposal dates from a conference held in Tucson that convened on August 29,1856. The conference issued a petition to the U. S. Congress, signed by 256 people, requesting organization of the territory, later a similar proposal was defeated in the Senate. In April 1860, impatient for Congress to act, a convention of 31 delegates met in Tucson, the delegates elected Lewis Owings as provisional governor. At the outbreak of the Civil War, sentiment in the territory was in favor of the Confederacy, the Confederacy regarded the territory as a valuable route for possible access to the Pacific Ocean, with the specific intention of capturing California. In July 1861, a small Confederate force of Texans under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor assaulted Fort Fillmore at Mesilla in the part of the territory. After the fort was abandoned by the Union garrison, Baylors force cut off the fleeing Union troops and forced them to surrender. On August 1, Baylor issued a Proclamation to the People of the Territory of Arizona, taking possession of the territory for the Confederacy, with Mesilla as the capital and himself as the governor. On August 28, a convention met again in Tucson and declared that the formed the previous year was part of the Confederacy. Granville H. Oury was elected as delegate to the Confederate Congress, Oury drafted legislation authorizing the organization of the Confederate Territory of Arizona. The legislation passed on January 13,1862, and the territory was created by proclamation of President Jefferson Davis on February 14. The following month, in March 1862, the U. S, the use of a north-south border rather than an east-west one had the effect of denying a de facto ratification of the Confederate Arizona Territory. The house bill stipulated that Tucson was to be the capital, the first capital was at Prescott, in the northern Union-controlled area. The boundaries for the territory, if they had kept their same size. However, in 1866, the section was annexed to the state of Nevada. The following year, the capital was moved to Tucson, the territory was admitted to the Union as the 48th state on February 14,1912. Proclamation To The People Of Arizona, the Worlds Work, A History of Our Time
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New Mexico Territory
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In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, the U. S. provisional government of New Mexico was established. After the Mexican Republic formally ceded the region to the U. S. A. in 1848, earlier in the year 1850, a bid for New Mexico statehood was underway under a proposed state constitution prohibiting slavery. The request was approved at the time that the Utah Territory was created to the north. Texas raised great opposition to this plan, as it claimed much of the same territory, in addition, slaveholders worried about not being able to expand slavery to the west of their current slave states. The Compromise of 1850 put an end to the push for immediate New Mexico statehood, approved by the United States Congress in September 1850, the legislation provided for the establishment of New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory. It also firmly established the western boundary of Texas. The status of slavery during the territorial period provoked considerable debate, the granting of statehood was up to a Congress sharply divided on the slavery issue. Regardless of its status, slavery was rare in antebellum New Mexico. Black slaves never numbered more than about a dozen, as one of the final attempts at compromise to avoid the Civil War, in December 1860, a U. S. House of Representatives committee proposed to admit New Mexico as a slave state immediately. As in New Mexico, slavery was already limited, due to earlier Mexican traditions, laws. The northwestern corner of New Mexico Territory was included in Arizona Territory until it was added to the southernmost part of the newly admitted State of Nevada in 1864, eventually Arizona Territory was organized as the State of Arizona. The Purchase treaty defines the new border as up the middle of river to the point where the parallel of 31°47 north latitude crosses the same 31°47′0″N 106°31′41. Although this area was smaller than what had been included in the failed statehood proposal of early 1850, the Gadsden Purchase was acquired by the United States from Mexico in 1853/1854, arranged by the then-American ambassador to Mexico, James Gadsden. The land of 29,640 square miles provided an easily constructed route for a future southern transcontinental railroad line for the future Southern Pacific Railroad. The Colorado Territory was established by the Colorado Organic Act on February 28,1861 and this Act removed the Colorado lands from the New Mexico Territory. This Act left the New Mexico Territory with boundaries identical to the eventual State of New Mexico for a half-century until admitted to the Union in 1912 as the 47th state, as the route to California, New Mexico Territory was disputed territory during the American Civil War. S. Albuquerque, NM, University of New Mexico Press,2014
31.
Colorado Territory
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The territory was organized in the wake of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush of 1858–1861 which brought the first large concentration of white settlement to the region. The boundaries of the Colorado Territory were identical with those of the current State of Colorado, the organization of the territory helped solidify Union control over a mineral-rich area of the Rocky Mountains. Statehood was regarded as fairly imminent, but territorial ambitions for statehood were thwarted at the end of 1865 by a veto by President Andrew Johnson. Statehood for the territory was an issue during the Ulysses Grant administration. The Colorado Territory ceased to exist when the State of Colorado was admitted to the Union in 1876, on the western side of the divide, the territory included much of the eastern Utah Territory, all of which was strongly controlled by the Ute and Shoshoni. The Eastern Plains were held more loosely by the intermixed Cheyenne and Arapaho, as well as by the Pawnee, Comanche. By the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the Native American presence had been eliminated from the High Plains. The land claims of Texas were, at first, controversial, the Comanche and Jicarilla Apache also formally ruled over the southeastern portions of the state. Arapaho and Cheyenne also hunted, warred, and sometimes lived in the far eastern and northeastern portion of the state as well, in 1776, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante explored southern Colorado in the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition. Frémont expedition in 1845–46, and the Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869 by John Wesley Powell, in 1779, Governor de Anza of New Mexico fought and defeated the Comanches under Cuerno Verde in southwestern Colorado. In 1786, de Anza made peace with the Comanches, creating an alliance against the Apaches, a group of Cherokee crossed the South Platte and Cache la Poudre River valleys on their way to California in 1848 during the California Gold Rush. They reported finding trace amounts of gold in the South Platte, in the south, in the San Luis Valley, early Mexican families established themselves in large land grants from the Mexican government. In the early 19th century, the upper South Platte River valley had been infiltrated by fur traders, the first movement of permanent U. S. settlers in the area began with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed private land claims to be filed. In 1858, Green Russell and a party of Georgians, having heard the story of the gold in the South Platte from Cherokee after they returned from California and that summer they founded a mining camp Auraria at the confluence of the South Platte and Cherry Creek. The Georgians left for their state the following winter. At Bents Fort along the Arkansas River, Russell told William Larimer, Jr. a Kansas land speculator, Larimer, realizing the opportunity to capitalize on it, hurried to Auraria. In November 1858, he claim to an area across Cherry Creek from Auraria and named it Denver City in honor of James W. Denver. Larimer did not intend to mine gold himself, he wanted to promote the new town, early arrivals moved upstream into the mountains quickly, seeking the lode source of the placer gold, and founded mining camps at Black Hawk and Central City
32.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
33.
Low-pressure area
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A low-pressure area, low, or depression is a region where the atmospheric pressure is lower than that of surrounding locations. Low-pressure systems form under areas of wind divergence that occur in the levels of the troposphere. The formation process of an area is known as cyclogenesis. Within the field of meteorology, atmospheric divergence aloft occurs in two areas, the first area is on the east side of upper troughs, which form half of a Rossby wave within the Westerlies. A second area of wind divergence aloft occurs ahead of embedded shortwave troughs, diverging winds aloft ahead of these troughs cause atmospheric lift within the troposphere below, which lowers surface pressures as upward motion partially counteracts the force of gravity. Thermal lows form due to localized heating caused by greater sunshine over deserts, since localized areas of warm air are less dense than their surroundings, this warmer air rises, which lowers atmospheric pressure near that portion of the Earths surface. Large-scale thermal lows over continents help drive monsoon circulations, low-pressure areas can also form due to organized thunderstorm activity over warm water. When this occurs over the tropics in concert with the Intertropical Convergence Zone, Monsoon troughs reach their northerly extent in August and their southerly extent in February. When a convective low acquires a well-hot circulation in the tropics it is termed a tropical cyclone, Tropical cyclones can form during any month of the year globally, but can occur in either the northern or southern hemisphere during November. Since clouds reflect sunlight, incoming solar radiation decreases, which causes lower temperatures during the day. At night the effect of clouds on outgoing longwave radiation, such as heat energy from the surface. The stronger the area of low pressure, the stronger the winds experienced in its vicinity, globally, low-pressure systems are most frequently located over the Tibetan Plateau and in the lee of the Rocky mountains. In Europe, recurring low-pressure weather systems are known as depressions. Cyclogenesis is the development and strengthening of cyclonic circulations, or low-pressure areas, cyclogenesis is the opposite of cyclolysis, and has an anticyclonic equivalent which deals with the formation of high-pressure areas—anticyclogenesis. Cyclogenesis is a term for several different processes, all of which result in the development of some sort of cyclone. Meteorologists use the term cyclone where circular pressure systems flow in the direction of the Earths rotation, the largest low-pressure systems are cold-core polar cyclones and extratropical cyclones which lie on the synoptic scale. Warm-core cyclones such as cyclones, mesocyclones, and polar lows lie within the smaller mesoscale. Subtropical cyclones are of intermediate size, cyclogenesis can occur at various scales, from the microscale to the synoptic scale
34.
Midwest
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It was officially named the North Central region by the Census Bureau until 1984. Illinois is the most populous of the states and North Dakota the least, a 2012 report from the United States Census put the population of the Midwest at 65,377,684. The Midwest is divided by the Census Bureau into two divisions, the East North Central Division includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, all of which are also part of the Great Lakes region. Major rivers in the include, from east to west, the Ohio River, the Upper Mississippi River. Chicago is the most populated city in the American Midwest and the third most populous in the entire country, other large Midwest cities include, Indianapolis, Columbus, Detroit, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Wichita and St. Louis. Chicago and its suburbs form the largest metropolitan area with 9.8 million people, followed by Metro Detroit. Paul, Greater St. Louis, Greater Cleveland, Greater Cincinnati, Kansas City metro area, the term Midwestern has been in use since the 1880s to refer to portions of the central United States. A variant term, Middle West, has used since the 19th century. Another term sometimes applied to the general region is the heartland. Other designations for the region have fallen out of use, such as the Northwest or Old Northwest, the Northwest Territory was one of the earliest territories of the United States, stretching northwest from the Ohio River to northern Minnesota and upper-Mississippi. The upper-Mississippi watershed including the Missouri and Illinois Rivers was the setting for the earlier French settlements of the Illinois Country, economically the region is balanced between heavy industry and agriculture, with finance and services such as medicine and education becoming increasingly important. Its central location makes it a crossroads for river boats, railroads, autos, trucks. Politically the region swings back and forth between the parties, and thus is heavily contested and often decisive in elections, after the sociological study Middletown, which was based on Muncie, Indiana, commentators used Midwestern cities as typical of the nation. The region has a higher ratio than the Northeast, the West. Traditional definitions of the Midwest include the Northwest Ordinance Old Northwest states, the states of the Old Northwest are also known as Great Lakes states and are east-north central in the United States. The Ohio River runs along the section while the Mississippi River runs north to south near the center. Many of the Louisiana Purchase states in the west-north central United States, are known as Great Plains states. The Midwest lies north of the 36°30′ parallel that the 1820 Missouri Compromise established as the line between future slave and non-slave states
35.
Hovenweep National Monument
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Hovenweep National Monument is located on land in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, between Cortez, Colorado and Blanding, Utah on the Cajon Mesa of the Great Sage Plain. Shallow tributaries run through the wide and deep canyons into the San Juan River, later, a succession of early puebloan cultures settled in the area and remained until the 14th century. Hovenweep became a National Monument in 1923 and is administered by the National Park Service, in July 2014, the International Dark-Sky Association designated Hovenweep an International Dark Sky Park. Evidence from the area indicates that there were Paleo-Indians and people of the Archaic period and they were adaptive to find sufficient food, supplementing their diet with nuts, seeds and fruit from wild plants. Late Basketmaker II Era AD50 to 500 The people living in the Four Corners region were introduced to maize, able to have greater control of their diet through cultivation, the hunter-gatherers lifestyle became more sedentary as small disperse groups began cultivating maize and squash. They also continued to hunt and gather wild plants and they were named Basketmakers for their skill in making baskets for storing food, covering with pitch to heat water, and using to toast seeds and nuts. They wove bags, sandals, belts out of plants and leaves –. They occasionally lived in dry caves where they dug pits and lined with stones to store food and these people were ancestors of the pueblo people of the Hovenweep pueblo settlement and Mesa Verde. The simple, gray pottery allowed them a tool for cooking. Beans were added to the cultivated diet, bows and arrows made hunting easier and thus the acquisition of hides for clothing. Turkey feathers were woven into blankets and robes, on the rim of Mesa Verde, small groups built pit houses which were built several feet below the surface with elements suggestive of the introduction of celebration rituals. Pueblo I Era 750 to 900 From pueblos at Mesa Verde we learn of some advancements during this period which are reflected in the Hovenweep structures built in the cultural period. Pueblo buildings were built with stone, windows facing south, the buildings were placed more closely together and reflected deepening religious celebration. Towers were built near kivas and likely used for look-outs, pottery became more versatile, not just for cooking, but now included pitchers, ladles, bowls, jars and dishware for food and drink. White pottery with black designs emerged, the coming from plants. Water management and conservation techniques, including the use of reservoirs, Pueblo II Era – 900–1150 About 900, the number of Hovenweep residential sites increased. Like the people at Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly National Monument, most of the pueblo building was conducted, about the same time as the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, between 1230 and 1275 when there were about 2,500 residents. The Hovenweep architecture and pottery was like that of Mesa Verde, Pueblo III Era – 1150–1350 The Hovenweep inhabitants completed construction over a period of time
36.
Ute Mountain
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Ute Mountain, is a peak within the Ute Mountains, a small mountain range in the southwestern corner of Colorado. It is on the edge of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation. The Reservation forms the corner of the state and of Montezuma County. Nomenclature for this peak and its range varies, all of these forms of the mountains name and of the ranges name can be found on various USGS maps, databases and reports. The Ute Mountains, with a collective profile commonly known as “The Sleeping Ute”, are a cluster of peaks approximately 5 by 12 miles in extent. Despite being much lower than Colorados highest peaks, Ute Mountain is the eighth most topographically prominent peak in the state and it is also notable for its large local relief in all directions, especially its rise of roughly 4,250 ft over the Montezuma Valley to the southeast. The Sleeping Ute is said to resemble a Ute Chief lying on his back with arms folded across his chest, the mountains were valued as a sacred place by the Weeminuche Ute band. In particular, this means that access to the range by outsiders is severely restricted. Few roads or trails are found in the mountains, although radio towers and water tanks have been built, various other forms of the legend can be found. Readily recognized from many spots up to 50 miles east or west, knees – Hermano Mountain or “The Knees” are obviously the knees of the figure. Toes – East Toe is a small, sharp and prominent igneous protrusion at the south-eastern end of the Ute Mountains proportioned. West Toe, a protrusion, has a very similar profile and is perfectly placed to complete the figure from the west. The illusion of a figure is further reinforced by its symmetry. The figure is nearly as complete seen from the west as from the east, the only town on the Reservation, Towaoc, lies at the feet of the figure and is home to most of the Reservations population. As the Reservation capital, Towaoc is the Ute Mountain Ute tribal headquarters, Cortez, the largest town in the area with a population of over 8000, lies outside the reservation 11.5 miles miles east-northeast of Ute Peak. The elevation of Cortez is 6,200 feet and can be considered the base elevation of the Ute Mountains, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park adjoins Mesa Verde National Park to the east of the mountains. The western boundary of Mesa Verde National Park is 12 miles east of Ute Peak, the Mesa and the Sleeping Ute share equal prominence as regional landmarks. McElmo Creek and Canyon Of The Ancients National Monument form the terminus of the Ute Mountains
37.
Abajo Mountains
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The Abajo Mountains, known locally as the Blue Mountains or The Blues, is a small mountain range west of Monticello, Utah, south of Canyonlands National Park and north of Blanding, Utah. The mountain range is located within the Manti-La Sal National Forest, the highest point within the range is Abajo Peak at 11,360 feet. This mountain range, like both the La Sal Range and Henry Mountains in the part of the Colorado Plateau, is formed about igneous intrusions that are relatively resistant to erosion. Some of these intrusions form laccoliths emplaced at depths of a few kilometers, the predominant igneous rock is porphyritic hornblende diorite. Ages of intrusion in the Abajo Mountains fall in the interval from 22 to 29 million years and these mountain ranges are part of the Colorado Plateau province west of the greater ranges of the Rocky Mountains. The laccolith ranges are much younger and have a different geologic origin. The range was named by the Spanish in the 1700s
38.
Chuska Mountains
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The Chuska Mountains are an elongate range on the southeast Colorado Plateau and within the Navajo Nation whose highest elevations approach 10,000 feet. The range is about 80 by 15 km and it trends north-northwest and is crossed by the state line between Arizona and New Mexico. The highlands are a plateau, with an average elevation of about 2,740 m. The highest point is Roof Butte at 2,994 m, other high points include the satellite Beautiful Mountain at 2,861 m and Lukachukai Mountains at 2,885 m, both also near the northern end, and Matthews Peak at 2,911 m. The San Juan Basin borders the Chuskas on the east, the eastern escarpment of the mountains is marked by slumps and landslides that extend out onto the western margin of the San Juan Basin. To the north, the Chuskas are separated from the Carrizo Mountains by Red Rock Valley, major peaks of the Chuskas include, Much of the range is Navajo Nation Forest, ponderosa pine, spruce, and fir are among the important tree varieties. Trees there were cut and transported more than 75 km to the east to construct pueblos in Chaco Culture National Historical Park in the San Juan Basin as early as 974 A. D, following a period of contentious debate, logging in the Chuskas was suspended in 1994. There has been discussion among the government about resuming logging at some future time. The forests of the Chuska Mountains and of the Defiance Uplift receive higher rainfall than the lowlands. Runoff from snowmelt and seasonal thunderstorms along the crest of the Chuskas generates more than half the water of the Navajo Nation. Canyons of Canyon de Chelly National Monument were cut by streams with headwaters in the Chuskas, the Chuska Mountains are sparsely populated. Nearby settlements are small, including Crystal, New Mexico, Lukachukai, Arizona, trading posts at Crystal and at Two Grey Hills, are associated with distinctive patterns used in Navajo rugs. A paved road, New Mexico Highway 134, crosses the range through Narbona Pass, later it was renamed Washington Pass, after Colonel John M. Washington, who commanded a military expedition against the Navajo. Narbona was a Navajo headman killed in an encounter with Washingtons troops in 1849, the Chuska Mountains and the Defiance Uplift immediately to the southwest form one of the prominent uplifted highlands of the Colorado Plateau. The uplifted region is separated from the San Juan Basin to the east by the Defiance, relative uplift, basin subsidence, and monocline formation began in the early stages of the Laramide orogeny about 75 to 80 million years ago. Although the Chuska Mountains can be considered part of the Defiance Uplift and they are capped by an erosional remnant of Chuska Sandstone, a unit locally more than 500 meters thick. The flat-lying Chuska Sandstone rests unconformably on Mesozoic rocks deformed in the Defiance monocline, biotite in layers of altered volcanic ash within the Chuska Sandstone has yielded radiometric ages of 35 and 33 million years by argon-argon dating. The Chuska Sandstone is formed of sand deposits, and it appears to be a remnant of a huge Oligocene sand sea
39.
Window Rock, Arizona
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Window Rock is a small city that serves as the seat of government and capital of the Navajo Nation, the largest territory of a sovereign Native American nation in North America. It lies within the boundaries of the St. Michaels Chapter, adjacent to the Arizona, Window Rocks population was 2,712 at the 2010 census. But is estimated to reach around 20,000 during weekdays when tribal offices are open, Window Rocks main attraction is the window formation of sandstone the community is named after. The Navajo Nation Museum, the Navajo Nation Zoological and Botanical Park, until 1936, the area was sparsely populated and known only by its ceremonial name Niʼ Ałníiʼgi. John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, chose the site to establish the seat of the Navajo Central Agency and his proposal to make the ceremonial name the official name met with resistance and Navajos soon ridiculed it as ni ałnííʼgóó. Due to this, the name of the local landmark. Tségháhoodzání, which is north of the Navajo governmental administration buildings, is important in the traditional Navajo Water Way Ceremony. It was one of the four places where Navajo medicine men go with their traditional woven water jugs to get water for the ceremony that is held for the abundance of rainfall. As a district within the St. Michaels Chapter, Window Rock is served by a Navajo Council Delegate and Chapter President, although Window Rock is within St. Window Rock is located at 35°40′22″N 109°3′44″W. The Arizona/New Mexico state line marks the eastern edge. According to the United States Census Bureau, the Window Rock CDP has an area of 5.3 square miles. The area is atop the Defiance Plateau which encompasses the area, the greater Window Rock area comprises the Fort Defiance and St. Michaels chapters, the hamlets of Hunters Point and the Summit, and Tse Bonito on the New Mexico side of the border with Arizona. As of the census of 2000, there were 3,059 people,876 households, the population density was 589.3 people per square mile. There were 998 housing units at a density of 192. 3/sq mi. The racial makeup of the CDP was 95. 46% Native American,3. 17% White,0. 42% Asian,0. 16% African American,0. 03% Pacific Islander,0. 07% from other races, and 0. 69% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1. 44% of the population,15. 6% of all households were made up of individuals and 2. 4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.42 and the family size was 3.81. In the CDP, the age distribution of the population shows 36. 3% under the age of 18,10. 9% from 18 to 24,28. 7% from 25 to 44,19. 6% from 45 to 64, the median age was 27 years
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Towaoc, Colorado
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Towaoc is a census-designated place on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation in Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The population was 1,087 at the 2010 census, the Towaoc Post Office has the ZIP Code 81334. Towaoc is the capital of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, replacing a tribal headquarters and it is located east of Sleeping Ute Mountain, a sacred mountain of the Ute people, northeast of the Four Corners Monument. Towaoc is located at 37°12′20″N 108°43′37″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 3.5 square miles, all land. In recent years, a complex has been developed directly on US Highway 491-160 at the junction of the road into the original town. This includes the Ute Mountain Casino, Hotel & Resort, with a center, campground. As of the census of 2000, there were 1,069 people,329 households, the population density was 317.4 people per square mile. There were 366 housing units at a density of 105.9 per square mile. The racial makeup of the CDP was 2. 83% White,0. 09% African American,94. 44% Native American,0. 46% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 2. 46% of the population. 16. 1% of all households were made up of individuals and 1. 8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 3.30 and the average family size was 3.68. In the CDP, the population was out with 40. 9% under the age of 18,9. 7% from 18 to 24,35. 1% from 25 to 44,10. 8% from 45 to 64. The median age was 25 years, for every 100 females there were 96.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.7 males, the median income for a household in the CDP was $1,405, and the median income for a family was $1,796. Males had an income of $1,583 versus $1,658 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $531, about 9. 0% of families and 2. 3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 49. 3% of those under age 18 and 27. 3% of those age 65 or over
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Metropolitan statistical area
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In the United States, a metropolitan statistical area is a geographical region with a relatively high population density at its core and close economic ties throughout the area. Such regions are neither legally incorporated as a city or town would be, as such, the precise definition of any given metropolitan area can vary with the source. A typical metropolitan area is centered on a large city that wields substantial influence over the region. However, some areas contain more than one large city with no single municipality holding a substantially dominant position. MSAs are defined by the Office of Management and Budget and used by the Census Bureau, U. S. Census statistics for metropolitan areas are reported according to the following definitions. The U. S. Office of Management and Budget defines a set of core based statistical areas throughout the country, CBSAs are delineated on the basis of a central urban area or urban cluster – in other words, a contiguous area of relatively high population density. CBSAs are composed of counties and county equivalents, the counties containing the core urban area are known as the central counties of the CBSA. Outlying counties are included in the CBSA if the employment interchange measure is 25% or more, although numbers are estimates. Some areas within these counties may be rural in nature. As well as MSAs, CBSAs are subdivided into statistical areas based on the population of the core urban area. Under certain conditions, one or more CBSAs may be grouped together to form a larger entity known as a combined statistical area. Previous terms that are no longer used include standard metropolitan statistical area, in New England, towns have precedence over counties, so statistically similar areas are defined in terms of town-based units known as New England city and town areas. United States of America Outline of the United States Index of United States-related articles Book, United States Demographics of the United States United States Census Bureau List of U. S
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Teec Nos Pos, Arizona
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Teec Nos Pos is a census-designated place in Apache County, Arizona, United States. The population was 730 at the 2010 census, the Navajo name of this community translates as cottonwoods in a circle. It is the terminus of U. S. Route 64. Teec Nos Pos is located at 36°55′23″N 109°5′18″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 14.3 square miles, of which 0.012 square miles, or 0. 07%, is water. As of the census of 2000, there were 799 people,227 households, the population density was 56.1 people per square mile. There were 317 housing units at a density of 22. 3/sq mi. The racial makeup of the CDP was 96. 50% Native American,1. 00% White,0. 13% from other races,1. 75% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 16. 7% of all households were made up of individuals and 5. 7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 3.52 and the average family size was 4.02. In the CDP, the age distribution of the population shows 41. 3% under the age of 18,8. 9% from 18 to 24,25. 9% from 25 to 44,18. 1% from 45 to 64, the median age was 25 years. For every 100 females there were 92.5 males, for every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.9 males. The median income for a household in the CDP was $17,188, males had a median income of $21,023 versus $14,464 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $6,229, about 41. 5% of families and 43. 8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 46. 6% of those under age 18 and 78. 9% of those age 65 or over. The community of Teec Nos Pos was originally located several miles to the south of its present location, and was known as Tisnasbas, the population has since moved north to the junction of U. S. In the 1930s, the Indian Irrigation Service constructed two concrete diversion dams on nearby Tiisnazbas Creek, the dams irrigated approximately 400 acres of Navajo farmland. It was renamed Teec Nos Pas in 1960 and Teec Nos Pos in 1983, Teec Nos Pos is the closest settlement of any size to the Four Corners Monument, which is approximately 7 miles to the northeast. The United States Postal Service operates the Teec Nos Pos Post Office, the area is a part of the Red Mesa Unified School District. The city is served by Red Mesa K-8 School and Red Mesa High School, originally the territory was within the Chinle School District. In July 1983 the Red Mesa Unified School District formed, splitting from the Chinle School District, linford, Laurance D. Navajo Places - History, Legend Landscape The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City,2000
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Cortez, Colorado
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The City of Cortez is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 8,482 at the 2010 United States Census, in 1886, the town was built to provide housing for the men working on the tunnels and irrigation ditches required to divert water out of the Dolores River and into Montezuma Valley. The town was named for Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and it is a popular stop for tourists, who stay there because of its central location among surrounding attractions, such as Mesa Verde National Park, Monument Valley, and the Four Corners. Within the McElmo Drainage Unit is Cannonball Ruins, Maxwell Community, Roys Ruin, Sand Canyon Archaeological District, mike Hua was on a training flight originating at Laughlin AFB, Texas, the U-2 aircraft engine flamed out at 70,000 feet MSL. Maj. Hua established best glide and was able to navigate through a valley to an airport that wasnt on his map nor did he know of its existence beforehand. The airport was the one in the area with a lighted runway which was illuminated overnight. Cortez is located at 37°20′57″N 108°34′45″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 5.5 square miles, of which 5.5 square miles is land and 0.04 square miles is water. Cortez is located in the area of the southwest known as the High Desert, as are most of northwestern, western, southwestern, and southern Colorado. Its economy is based heavily on tourism, both to nearby Mesa Verde National Park as well as to San Juan National Forest, Bureau of Land Management lands in the area. Mesa Verde National Park, featuring Ancient Pueblo cliff dwellings, is situated southeast of Cortez, Cortez has a cold and continental semi-arid climate with hot summer days and cold winter nights, the latter a result of its elevation. As of the census of 2010, there were 8,482 people,3,590 households, the population density was 1,449.9 people per square mile. There were 3,885 housing units at a density of 637.6 per square mile. The gender makeup of the city was 48. 1% male and 51. 9% female. The racial makeup of the city was 79. 2% White,0. 4% African American,11. 8% Native American,0. 8% Asian,0. 00% Pacific Islander,6. 04% from other races, and 2. 44% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 13. 30% of the population,30. 0% of all households were made up of individuals and 12. 7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the family size was 2.92. In the city, the population was out with 26. 7% under the age of 18,8. 8% from 18 to 24,26. 6% from 25 to 44,21. 6% from 45 to 64. The median age was 36 years, for every 100 females, there were 91.4 males
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Monticello, Utah
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Monticello /mɒntɪˈsɛloʊ/ is a city located in San Juan County, Utah, and is the county seat. It is the second most populous city in San Juan County, the Monticello area was settled in July 1887 by pioneers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Monticello, named in honor of Thomas Jeffersons estate, became the county seat in 1895 and was incorporated as a city in 1910. Monticello, along much of San Juan County, experienced an increase in population. Several uranium and vanadium mines were opened in the area, an 18-hole golf course, The Hideout, was built near the reclaimed site of the uranium mill using DOE cleanup funding in 2000. The Hideout has been ranked No.2 Golf Course in Utah, in 1998, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dedicated the Monticello Utah Temple, the first in a series of mini temples and the 53rd temple for the church. Monticello rests at the base of the Abajo Mountains on the Colorado Plateau, the Old Spanish Trail trade route passed through the area of Monticello from 1829 into the 1850s. Monticello was one of the cities established by Mormon pioneers in the Utah Territory. Farming, ranching, and uranium mining have all played an important role in the economy, early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began the first full-scale settling of what is now known as San Juan County, Utah. Few white residents had settled along the San Juan River prior to the arrival of the Mormon pioneers from the San Juan Expedition, after passing through Hole-In-The-Rock, the pioneers arrived in the San Juan County area and settled in Bluff on 6 April 1880. In that year, on a journey to northern Utah from the San Juan River settlements, Apostles Erastus Snow and Brigham Young and they were quite impressed by it, and this encounter was one of the key factors behind LDS settlement there a few years later. Piute Springs, Soldier’s Spring, and Montezuma Creek were a few of the sources in the area named by passersby. In March 1886, Francis A. Hammond, the LDS Stake President of San Juan County, the scouts found that a few people had already begun to utilize the land. The first white man to build a cabin in the Monticello area was likely cattleman Patrick ODonnell in 1879, the North and South Forks of Montezuma Canyon, through which Montezuma Creek flows, were being utilized when the scouts arrived. Notwithstanding the fact that others were utilizing the land, Hammond sent the families of George A. Adams, jones, Parley R. Butt and Charles E. Walton from Bluff to establish a new settlement at what is now Monticello. They first set up camp at Verdure near the South Fork of Montezuma Creek on March 11,1887, six miles south of what is now Monticello. By the first part of July,1887, the men had begun to plant crops, survey an irrigation ditch, conflicts soon began with the Carlisle cowboys and Ute Indians over water and land rights, resulting in warning shots, heated disputes, and legal battles. Learning from lawyers that the Carlisles had very little claim to any of the region
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Blanding, Utah
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Blanding is a city in San Juan County, Utah, United States. The population was 3,375 at the 2010 census, making it the most populated city in San Juan County and it was settled in the late 19th century by Mormon settlers, predominantly from the famed Hole-In-The-Rock expedition. Economic contributors include mineral processing, mining, agriculture, local commerce, tourism, Blanding is located near both the Navajo and White Mesa Ute Native American reservations, and a significant percentage of Blandings population has family ties to these nearby cultures. It is located approximately 1 hour south of the popular recreation hub of Moab, first known as Grayson, the town changed its name in 1914 when a wealthy easterner, Thomas W. Bicknell, offered a thousand-volume library to any town that would adopt his name. Grayson competed with Thurber, Utah for the prize, Grayson was renamed Blanding after the maiden name of Bicknells wife, and each of the towns received 500 books. Blanding is located at 37°37′24″N 109°28′44″W in the Four Corners area of the Colorado Plateau, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.4 square miles, all land. As of the census of 2010, there were 3,375 people,1,013 households, the population density was 1,332.7 people per square mile. There were 1,110 housing units at a density of 417.7 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 66. 1% White,0. 3% African American,29. 4% Native American,0. 09% Asian,0. 01% Pacific Islander. 5% from other races, and 3. 3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3. 8% of the population,20. 4% of all households were made up of individuals and 8. 8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.19 and the family size was 3.71. In the city, the population was out with 39. 2% under the age of 19,9. 87% from 20 to 24, 22% from 25 to 44,18. 8% from 45 to 64. The median age was 26.6 years, for every 100 females there were 95.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.3 males, the median income for a household in the city was $43,946, and the median income for a family was $50,833. Males had an income of $42,667 versus $21,615 for females. About 14. 1% of families and 11. 1% of the population were below the poverty line, the community of Blanding and its surrounding area is rich in Anasazi artifacts, many examples of which are now on display at the Edge of the Cedars Museum. Largely these examples have come from the collections of local residents and were put together early in the history of the community, federal authorities still retain out-of-area custody of local artifacts seized in raids conducted in 2009
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Kayenta, Arizona
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Kayenta is a U. S. census-designated place which is part of the Navajo Nation and is in Navajo County, Arizona. The population was 5,189 at the 2010 census, Kayenta is located 25 miles south of Monument Valley and contains a number of hotels and motels which service visitors to Monument Valley. Like other places on the Navajo Nation, it is illegal to serve alcohol, Arizona does not observe Daylight Time, however, the Navajo reservation does. Kayenta Township is the only municipal-style government on the Navajo Nation and it is regarded as a political sub-division of the Navajo Nation. It is managed by an elected town board, which hires the township manager. Kayenta is the name for the Chapter, as well as the township, Kayenta Chapter encompasses land in both Utah and Arizona. Thus, the Navajo Nations census figures for Kayenta Chapter are significantly different from those of Kayenta proper, Kayenta is located at 36°42′43″N 110°15′00″W, at an elevation of 5,700 feet. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has an area of 13.2 square miles. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Kayenta has a semi-arid climate, as of the census of 2010, there were 5,189 people. The population density was 393.1 people per mile with a total of 1,375 housing units. The racial makeup of the CDP was 92. 27% Native American,4. 56% White,0. 25% Black or African American,0. 08% Asian,0. 02% Pacific Islander,0. 31% from other races, and 2. 51% from two or more races. 1. 97% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. In the CDP, the population was out with 38. 9% under the age of 18,11. 4% from 18 to 24,11. 9% from 25 to 34,33. 2% from 35 to 64. The median age was 22 years, for every 100 females there were 90.7 males. The Kayenta Fourth of July Rodeo is an annual event taking place from July 1–4. Various events take place daily, while the Best of the Best, Kayenta is served by the Kayenta Unified School District. There are several schools that serve the community, Kayenta Elementary School, Kayenta Middle School, and Monument Valley High School are the public schools. Kayenta Community School, part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is a school serving both day and dorm students
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Chinle, Arizona
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Chinle is a census-designated place in Apache County, Arizona, United States. The name in Navajo means flowing out and is a reference to the location where the water out of the Canyon de Chelly. The population was 4,518 at the 2010 census, Chinle is located at 36°9′17″N 109°34′45″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has an area of 16.1 square miles, of which 16.0 square miles is land and 0.04 square miles. As of the census of 2000, there were 5,366 people,1,358 households, the population density was 334.7 people per square mile. There were 1,644 housing units at a density of 102.6 per square mile. The racial makeup of the CDP was 91. 28% Native American,6. 39% White,0. 19% Black or African American,0. 17% Asian,0. 04% Pacific Islander,0. 60% from other races, and 1. 34% from two or more races. 1. 83% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race,18. 3% of all households were made up of individuals and 2. 5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.84 and the family size was 4.43. In the CDP, the age distribution of the population shows 43. 9% under the age of 18,10. 5% from 18 to 24,25. 8% from 25 to 44,14. 7% from 45 to 64, the median age was 22 years. For every 100 females there were 93.6 males, for every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 81.9 males. The median income for a household in the CDP was $27,324, males had a median income of $25,321 versus $22,663 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $8,755, about 40. 4% of families and 43. 5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 52. 6% of those under age 18 and 46. 9% of those age 65 or over. After a period of use for trade and war by the Spanish, the first trading post was established here in 1882. This grew to a camp by 1885. A government school was established in 1910, initially anglicized as Chin Lee, the name was changed to Chinle on April 1,1941. Chinle serves as a community for Canyon de Chelly National Monument, established in 1931 primarily to preserve the archaeological sites. Canyon de Chelly AZ is unique among the National Park Service units because the park is located entirely on Navajo tribal land and has a residential canyon community, the area is served by Chinle Unified School District
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Shiprock, New Mexico
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Shiprock is a census-designated place in San Juan County, New Mexico, United States, on the Navajo reservation. The population was 8,156 at the 2000 census and it is part of the Farmington Metropolitan Statistical Area. Shiprock is named after the nearby Shiprock rock formation and it is home to the annual Northern Navajo Fair, held every October. Since 1984, the community has been the host of the Shiprock Marathon and it is also home to a campus of Diné College, a tribally controlled community college with seven other campuses across the Navajo Nation. It is the site of a Chapter House for the Navajo, a Bureau of Indian Affairs agency, the Northern Navajo Medical Center, Shiprock is a key road junction for truck traffic and tourists visiting the Four Corners, Mesa Verde, Shiprock and the Grand Canyon. The town lies at the intersection of U. S. Route 64, the basis of local government for the Navajo Reservation, the Chapter was initiated in 1922 as a means of improving agricultural conditions at a local level. Later the Chapter became the basic subdivision of Navajo Tribal Government. The Chapters elect representatives to the Navajo Tribal Council, the branch of Navajo government. Shiprock is located at 36°47′34″N 108°41′14″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 16.2 square miles, of which 15.9 square miles is land and 0.3 square miles is water. As of the census of 2000, there were 8,156 people,2,184 households, the population density was 513.6 people per square mile. There were 2,594 housing units at a density of 163.3 per square mile. The racial makeup of the CDP was 96. 74% Native American,2. 17% White,0. 16% African American,0. 12% Asian,0. 01% Pacific Islander,0. 10% from other races, and 0. 70% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1. 29% of the population, in 2010, the population of Shiprock was 8,295, which is an increase of +1. 7% since 2000. 13. 6% of all households were made up of individuals and 3. 7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 3.73 and the average family size was 4.06. In the CDP, the population was out with 38. 6% under the age of 18,11. 6% from 18 to 24,28. 4% from 25 to 44,16. 5% from 45 to 64. The median age was 25 years, for every 100 females there were 92.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.3 males, the median income for a household in the CDP was $24,523, and the median income for a family was $24,951. Males had an income of $24,032 versus $17,328 for females
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Four Corners travel guide from Wikivoyage