Saint Anthony Main
Saint Anthony Main refers to an area of buildings with multiple owners located on Main Street across from St Anthony falls in the Nicollet Island/East Bank, Minneapolis section of Southeast, Minneapolis in the U. S. state of Minnesota. The area is associated with Northeast, Minneapolis as it is northeast of downtown on the east side of the Mississippi River, it opened as a festival marketplace in the 1980s. The area underwent a resurgence during the condominium boom in the early 2000s with several condo projects built in and around the area, it is now home to a movie theater, four bars and restaurants, a small cafe, design firms, a Segway tour operator. Saint Anthony Main sits on the other side of Central Avenue from Riverplace, a housing and office complex, it fronts the river at Saint Anthony Falls, the only waterfall on the Mississippi River, sits next to the Hennepin Island Hydroelectric Plant, host of the Water Power Park, which opened in Spring 2007. Some of the buildings in the area date from the 1850s when the Village of Saint Anthony on the northeast side of the Mississippi River was still separate from Minneapolis itself.
Several are contributing properties to the Saint Anthony Falls Historic District: Pracna Building, 117 Main Street SE Salisbury & Satterlee Company Complex, 201-205 and 219 Main Street SE Upton Block/ Union Iron Works, 129 Main Street SE Martin and Morrison Block, 127-129 Main Street SE There are newer buildings in the area such as Phoenix on the River and the Mill and Main apartments and the Stone Arch Apartments complexes. The Pillsbury A-Mill was renovated and converted into new apartments including the A-Mill Artist lofts. Saint Anthony Main website www. StoneArchBridge.com www. StAnthonyFalls.com www. NicolletIsland.com Photographs of area around Saint Anthony Main, from About.com Sold Down the River Article on Riverfront Development
Minneapolis
Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County and the larger of the Twin Cities, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. As of 2017, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota and 45th-largest in the United States, with an estimated population of 422,331; the Twin Cities metropolitan area consists of Minneapolis, its neighbor Saint Paul, suburbs which altogether contain about 3.6 million people, is the third-largest economic center in the Midwest. Minneapolis lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the river's confluence with the Minnesota River, adjoins Saint Paul, the state's capital; the city is abundantly rich in water, with 13 lakes, the Mississippi River and waterfalls. It was once a hub for timber; the city and surrounding region is the primary business center between Seattle. In 2011, Minneapolis proper was home to the fifth-highest number of Fortune 500 headquarters in the United States; as an integral link to the global economy, Minneapolis is categorized as a global city.
Minneapolis has one of the largest LGBT populations in the U. S. proportional to its overall population. Noted for its strong music and performing arts scenes, Minneapolis is home to both the award-winning Guthrie Theater and the historic First Avenue nightclub. Reflecting the region's status as an epicenter of folk and alternative rock music, the city served as the launching pad for several of the 20th century's most influential musicians, including Bob Dylan and Prince. Minneapolis has become noted for its underground and independent hip-hop and rap scenes, producing artists such as Brother Ali and Dessa; the name Minneapolis is attributed to Charles Hoag, the city's first schoolmaster, who combined mni, a Dakota Sioux word for water, polis, the Greek word for city. Descendants of first peoples, Dakota Sioux were the region's sole residents when French explorers arrived in 1680. For a time, amicable relations were based on fur trading. More European-American settlers arrived, competing for game and other resources with the Native Americans.
After the Revolutionary War, Great Britain granted the land east of the Mississippi to the United States. In the early 19th century, the United States acquired land to the west from France in the Louisiana Purchase. Fort Snelling, just south of present-day Minneapolis, was built in 1819 by the United States Army, it attracted traders and merchants, spurring growth in the area. The United States government pressed the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota to sell their land, allowing people arriving from the East to settle there. Preoccupied with the Civil War, the United States government reneged on its promises of cash payments to the Dakota, resulting in hunger, the Dakota War of 1862, internment and hardship; the Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town in 1856, on the Mississippi's west bank. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867, the year rail service began between Minneapolis and Chicago, it joined with the east-bank city of St. Anthony in 1872. Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the Mississippi River and a source of power for its early industry.
Forests in northern Minnesota were a valuable resource for the lumber industry, which operated seventeen sawmills on power from the waterfall. By 1871, the west river bank had twenty-three businesses, including flour mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, mills for cotton, paper and planing wood. Due to the occupational hazards of milling, six local sources of artificial limbs were competing in the prosthetics business by the 1890s; the farmers of the Great Plains grew grain, shipped by rail to the city's 34 flour mills. Millers have used hydropower elsewhere since the 1st century B. C. but the results in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 were so remarkable the city has been described as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has seen." A father of modern milling in America and founder of what became General Mills, Cadwallader C. Washburn converted his business from gristmills to revolutionary technology, including "gradual reduction" processing by steel and porcelain roller mills capable of producing premium-quality pure white flour quickly.
Some ideas were developed by William Dixon Gray and some acquired through industrial espionage from Hungary by William de la Barre. Charles A. Pillsbury and the C. A. Pillsbury Company across the river were a step behind, hiring Washburn employees to use the new methods; the hard red spring wheat that grows in Minnesota became valuable, Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized at the time as the best in the world. Not until did consumers discover the value in the bran that "... Minneapolis flour millers dumped" into the Mississippi. After 1883, a Minneapolis miller started a new industry when he began to sell bran byproduct as animal feed. Millers cultivated relationships with academic scientists at the University of Minnesota; those scientists backed them politically on many issues, such as in the early 20th century when health advocates in the nascent field of nutrition criticized the flour "bleaching" process. At peak production, a single mill at Washburn-Crosby made enough flour for 12 million loaves of bread each day.
Further, by 1895, through the efforts of silent partner William Hood Dunwoody, Washburn-Crosby exported four
New York City
The City of New York called either New York City or New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles, New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural and media capital of the world, exerts a significant impact upon commerce, research, education, tourism, art and sports; the city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of, a separate county of the State of New York. The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898; the city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world. In 2017, the New York metropolitan area produced a gross metropolitan product of US$1.73 trillion. If greater New York City were a sovereign state, it would have the 12th highest GDP in the world. New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world. New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan.
The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, it has been the country's largest city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U. S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is an international symbol of the U. S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, environmental sustainability, as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. Many districts and landmarks in New York City are well known, with the city having three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013 and receiving a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world. Times Square, iconic as the world's "heart" and its "Crossroads", is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, a major center of the world's entertainment industry.
The names of many of the city's landmarks and parks are known around the world. Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world. New York is home to the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system worldwide, with 472 rail stations. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top universities in the world. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. In 1664, the city was named in honor of the Duke of York.
James's older brother, King Charles II, had appointed the Duke proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, which England had seized from the Dutch. During the Wisconsinan glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth; the erosive forward movement of the ice contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers. In the precolonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquian Native Americans, including the Lenape, whose homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island; the first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown. He named it Nouvelle Angoulême. A Spanish expedition led by captain Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio.
The Padrón Rea
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the northwestern region of the United States. It borders the state of Montana to the east and northeast, Wyoming to the east and Utah to the south, Washington and Oregon to the west. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canadian border with the province of British Columbia. With a population of 1.7 million and an area of 83,569 square miles, Idaho is the 14th largest, the 12th least populous and the 7th least densely populated of the 50 U. S. states. The state's capital and largest city is Boise. Idaho prior to European settlement was inhabited by Native American peoples, some of whom still live in the area. In the early 19th century, Idaho was considered part of the Oregon Country, an area disputed between the U. S. and the United Kingdom. It became U. S. territory with the signing of the Oregon Treaty of 1846, but a separate Idaho Territory was not organized until 1863, instead being included for periods in Oregon Territory and Washington Territory. Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, becoming the 43rd state.
Forming part of the Pacific Northwest, Idaho is divided into several distinct geographic and climatic regions. In the state's north, the isolated Idaho Panhandle is linked with Eastern Washington, with which it shares the Pacific Time Zone – the rest of the state uses the Mountain Time Zone; the state's south includes the Snake River Plain, while the south-east incorporates part of the Great Basin. Idaho is quite mountainous, contains several stretches of the Rocky Mountains; the United States Forest Service holds about 38 % of the most of any state. Industries significant for the state economy include manufacturing, mining and tourism. A number of science and technology firms are either headquartered in Idaho or have factories there, the state contains the Idaho National Laboratory, the country's largest Department of Energy facility. Idaho's agricultural sector supplies many products, but the state is best known for its potato crop, which comprises around one-third of the nationwide yield; the official state nickname is the "Gem State".
The name's origin remains a mystery. In the early 1860s, when the United States Congress was considering organizing a new territory in the Rocky Mountains, eccentric lobbyist George M. Willing suggested the name "Idaho", which he claimed was derived from a Shoshone language term meaning "the sun comes from the mountains" or "gem of the mountains". Willing claimed he had invented the name. Congress decided to name the area Colorado Territory when it was created in February 1861. Thinking they would get a jump on the name, locals named a community in Colorado "Idaho Springs". However, the name "Idaho" did not fall into obscurity; the same year Congress created Colorado Territory, a county called Idaho County was created in eastern Washington Territory. The county was named after a steamship named Idaho, launched on the Columbia River in 1860, it is unclear after Willing's claim was revealed. Regardless, part of Washington Territory, including Idaho County, was used to create Idaho Territory in 1863.
Despite this lack of evidence for the origin of the name, many textbooks well into the 20th century repeated as fact Willing's account the name "Idaho" derived from the Shoshone term "ee-da-how". A 1956 Idaho history textbook says:"Idaho" is a Shoshoni Indian exclamation; the word consists of three parts. The first is "Ee", which in English conveys the idea of "coming down"; the second is "dah", the Shoshoni stem or root for both "sun" and "mountain". The third syllable, "how", denotes the exclamation and stands for the same thing in Shoshoni that the exclamation mark does in the English language; the Shoshoni word is "Ee-dah-how", the Indian thought thus conveyed when translated into English means, "Behold! the sun coming down the mountain. An alternative etymology attributes the name to the Plains Apache word "ídaahę́", used in reference to The Comanche. Idaho borders six U. S. states and one Canadian province. The states of Washington and Oregon are to the west and Utah are to the south, Montana and Wyoming are to the east.
Idaho shares a short border with the Canadian province of British Columbia to the north. The landscape is rugged with some of the largest unspoiled natural areas in the United States. For example, at 2.3 million acres, the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area is the largest contiguous area of protected wilderness in the continental United States. Idaho is a Rocky Mountain state with scenic areas; the state has snow-capped mountain ranges, vast lakes and steep canyons. The waters of the Snake River rush through the deepest gorge in the United States. Shoshone Falls plunges down rugged cliffs from a height greater than Niagara Falls; the major rivers in Idaho are the Snake River, the Clark Fork/Pend Oreille River, the Clearwater River, the Salmon River. Other significant rivers include the Coeur d'Alene River, the Spokane River, the Boise River, the Payette River; the Salmon River empties into the Snake in Hells Canyon and forms the southern boundary of Nez Perce County on its north shore, of which Lewiston is the county seat.
The Port of Lewiston, at the confluence of the Clearwater and the Snake Rivers is the farthest inland seaport on the West Coast at 465 river miles from the Pacific at Astoria, Oregon. Idaho's highest point is 12,662 ft, in the Lost River Range north of Mackay. Idaho's lowest poi
Intercity bus service
An intercity bus service or intercity coach service called a long-distance, over-the-road, long-haul, or highway bus or coach service, is a public transport service using coaches to carry passengers significant distances between different cities, towns, or other populated areas. Unlike a transit bus service, which has frequent stops throughout a city or town, an intercity bus service has a single stop at one location in or near a city, travels long distances without stopping at all. Intercity bus services may be operated by government agencies or private industry, for profit and not for profit. Intercity coach travel can serve areas or countries with no train services, or may be set up to compete with trains by providing a more flexible or cheaper alternative. Intercity bus services are of prime importance in populated rural areas that have little or no public transportation. Intercity bus services are one of four common transport methods between cities, not all of which are available in all places.
The others are by airliner and private automobile. The first intercity scheduled transport service was called the stagecoach and originated in the 17th century. Crude coaches were being built from the 16th century in England, but without suspension, these coaches achieved low speeds on the poor quality rutted roads of the time. By the mid 17th century, a basic stagecoach infrastructure was being put in place; the first stagecoach route ran from Edinburgh to Leith. This was followed by a steady proliferation of other routes around the country. A string of coaching inns operated as stopping points for travellers on the route between London and Liverpool by the mid 17th century; the coach would depart every Monday and Thursday and took ten days to make the journey during the summer months. They became adopted for travel in and around London by mid-century and travelled at a few miles per hour. Shakespeare's first plays were staged at coaching inns such as Southwark; the speed of travel remained constant until the mid-18th century.
Reforms of the turnpike trusts, new methods of road building and the improved construction of coaches all led to a sustained rise in the comfort and speed of the average journey—from an average journey length of 2 days for the Cambridge-London route in 1750 to a length of under 7 hours in 1820. Robert Hooke helped in the construction of some of the first spring-suspended coaches in the 1660s and spoked wheels with iron rim brakes were introduced, improving the characteristics of the coach. In 1754, a Manchester-based company began a new service called the "Flying Coach", it was advertised with the following announcement: "However incredible it may appear, this coach will arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester." A similar service was begun from Liverpool three years using coaches with steel spring suspension. This coach took an unprecedented three days to reach London with an average speed of eight miles per hour. More dramatic improvements to coach speed were made by John Palmer at the British Post Office, who commissioned a fleet of mail coaches to deliver the post across the country.
His experimental coach left Bristol at 4 pm on 2 August 1784 and arrived in London just 16 hours later. The golden age of the stagecoach was during the Regency period, from 1800 to 1830; the era saw great improvements in the design of the coaches, notably by John Besant in 1792 and 1795. His coach had a improved turning capacity and braking system, a novel feature that prevented the wheels from falling off while the coach was in motion. Obadiah Elliott registered the first patent for a spring-suspension vehicle; each wheel had two durable steel leaf springs on each side and the body of the carriage was fixed directly to the springs attached to the axles. Steady improvements in road construction were made at this time, most the widespread implementation of Macadam roads up and down the country. Coaches in this period travelled at around 12 miles per hour and increased the level of mobility in the country, both for people and for mail; each route had an average of four coaches operating on it at one time - two for both directions and a further two spares in case of a breakdown en route.
The development of railways in the 1830s spelt the end for the stagecoaches across Europe and America, with only a few companies surviving to provide services for short journeys and excursions until the early years of the 20th century. The first motor coaches were acquired by operators of those horse-drawn vehicles. W. C. Standerwick of Blackpool, England acquired its first motor charabanc in 1911, Royal Blue from Bournemouth acquired its first motor charabanc in 1913. Motor coaches were used only for excursions. In 1919, Royal Blue took advantage of a rail strike to run a coach service from Bournemouth to London; the service was so successful. In 1920 the Minister of Transport Eric Campbell Geddes was quoted in Punch magazine as saying "I think it would be a calamity if we did anything to prevent the economic use of charabancs" and expressed concern at the problems caused to small charabanc and omnibus operators in parliament. In America, Carl Eric Wickman began providing the first service in 1913.
Frustrated about being unable to sell a seven-passenger automobile on the showroom floor of the dealership where he worked, he purchased the vehicle himself and started using it to transport miners between Hibbing and Alice, Minnesota. He began providing this service in what would start a new company and industry; the company would one day be known as Greyhound. In 1914
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the western United States. The state is the 10th largest by area, the least populous, the second most sparsely populated state in the country. Wyoming is bordered on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado, on the southwest by Utah, on the west by Idaho and Montana; the state population was estimated at 577,737 in 2018, less than 31 of the most populous U. S. cities including Denver in neighboring Colorado. Cheyenne is the state capital and the most populous city, with an estimated population of 63,624 in 2017; the western two-thirds of the state is covered by the mountain ranges and rangelands of the Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie called the High Plains. Half of the land in Wyoming is owned by the U. S. government, leading Wyoming to rank sixth by area and fifth by proportion of a state's land owned by the federal government. Federal lands include two national parks—Grand Teton and Yellowstone—two national recreation areas, two national monuments, several national forests, historic sites, fish hatcheries, wildlife refuges.
Original inhabitants of the region include the Crow, Arapaho and Shoshone. Southwestern Wyoming was in the Spanish Empire and Mexican territory until it was ceded to the United States in 1848 at the end of the Mexican–American War; the region acquired the name Wyoming when a bill was introduced to the U. S. Congress in 1865 to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming"; the name was used earlier for the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, is derived from the Munsee word xwé:wamənk, meaning "at the big river flat". The main drivers of Wyoming's economy are mineral extraction—mostly coal, natural gas, trona—and tourism. Agricultural commodities include livestock, sugar beets and wool; the climate is semi-arid and continental and windier than the rest of the U. S. with greater temperature extremes. Wyoming has been a politically conservative state since the 1950s, with the Republican Party candidate winning every presidential election except 1964. Wyoming's climate is semi-arid and continental, is drier and windier in comparison to most of the United States with greater temperature extremes.
Much of this is due to the topography of the state. Summers in Wyoming are warm with July high temperatures averaging between 85 and 95 °F in most of the state. With increasing elevation, this average drops with locations above 9,000 feet averaging around 70 °F. Summer nights throughout the state are characterized by a rapid cooldown with the hottest locations averaging in the 50–60 °F range at night. In most of the state, most of the precipitation tends to fall in early summer. Winters are cold, but are variable with periods of sometimes extreme cold interspersed between mild periods, with Chinook winds providing unusually warm temperatures in some locations. Wyoming is a dry state with much of the land receiving less than 10 inches of rainfall per year. Precipitation depends on elevation with lower areas in the Big Horn Basin averaging 5–8 inches; the lower areas in the North and on the eastern plains average around 10–12 inches, making the climate there semi-arid. Some mountain areas do receive a good amount of precipitation, 20 inches or more, much of it as snow, sometimes 200 inches or more annually.
The state's highest recorded temperature is 114 °F at Basin on July 12, 1900 and the lowest recorded temperature is −66 °F at Riverside on February 9, 1933. The number of thunderstorm days vary across the state with the southeastern plains of the state having the most days of thunderstorm activity. Thunderstorm activity in the state is highest during early summer; the southeastern corner of the state is the most vulnerable part of the state to tornado activity. Moving away from that point and westwards, the incidence of tornadoes drops with the west part of the state showing little vulnerability. Tornadoes, where they occur, tend to be small and brief, unlike some of those that occur farther east; as specified in the designating legislation for the Territory of Wyoming, Wyoming's borders are lines of latitude 41°N and 45°N, longitude 104°3'W and 111°3'W, making the shape of the state a latitude-longitude quadrangle. Wyoming is one of only three states to have borders along only straight latitudinal and longitudinal lines, rather than being defined by natural landmarks.
Due to surveying inaccuracies during the 19th century, Wyoming's legal border deviates from the true latitude and longitude lines by up to half of a mile in some spots in the mountainous region along the 45th parallel. Wyoming is bordered on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado, on the southwest by Utah, on the west by Idaho, it is the tenth largest state in the United States in total area, containing 97,814 square miles and is made up of 23 counties. From the north border to the south border it is 276 miles; the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. The state is a great plateau broken by many mountain ranges. Surface elevations range from the summit of Gannett Peak in the Wind River Mountain Range, at 13,804 feet, to the Belle Fourche River val
South Dakota
South Dakota is a U. S. state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who compose a large portion of the population and dominated the territory. South Dakota is the seventeenth largest by area, but the fifth smallest by population and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States; as the southern part of the former Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889 with North Dakota. Pierre is the state capital and Sioux Falls, with a population of about 187,200, is South Dakota's largest city. South Dakota is bordered by the states of North Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Montana; the state is bisected by the Missouri River, dividing South Dakota into two geographically and distinct halves, known to residents as "East River" and "West River". Eastern South Dakota is home to most of the state's population, the area's fertile soil is used to grow a variety of crops. West of the Missouri, ranching is the predominant agricultural activity, the economy is more dependent on tourism and defense spending.
Most of the Native American reservations are in West River. The Black Hills, a group of low pine-covered mountains sacred to the Sioux, are in the southwest part of the state. Mount Rushmore, a major tourist destination, is there. South Dakota has a temperate continental climate, with four distinct seasons and precipitation ranging from moderate in the east to semi-arid in the west; the state's ecology features species typical of a North American grassland biome. Humans have inhabited the area for several millennia, with the Sioux becoming dominant by the early 19th century. In the late 19th century, European-American settlement intensified after a gold rush in the Black Hills and the construction of railroads from the east. Encroaching miners and settlers triggered a number of Indian wars, ending with the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. Key events in the 20th century included the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, increased federal spending during the 1940s and 1950s for agriculture and defense, an industrialization of agriculture that has reduced family farming.
While several Democratic senators have represented South Dakota for multiple terms at the federal level, the state government is controlled by the Republican Party, whose nominees have carried South Dakota in each of the last 13 presidential elections. Dominated by an agricultural economy and a rural lifestyle, South Dakota has sought to diversify its economy in areas to attract and retain residents. South Dakota's history and rural character still influence the state's culture. South Dakota is in the north-central United States, is considered a part of the Midwest by the U. S. Census Bureau; the culture and geography of western South Dakota have more in common with the West than the Midwest. South Dakota has a total area of 77,116 square miles, making the state the 17th largest in the Union. Black Elk Peak named Harney Peak, with an elevation of 7,242 ft, is the state's highest point, while the shoreline of Big Stone Lake is the lowest, with an elevation of 966 ft. South Dakota is bordered to the north by North Dakota.
The geographical center of the U. S. is 17 miles west of Castle Rock in Butte County. The North American continental pole of inaccessibility is between Allen and Kyle, 1,024 mi from the nearest coastline; the Missouri River is the longest river in the state. Other major South Dakota rivers include the Cheyenne, Big Sioux, White Rivers. Eastern South Dakota has many natural lakes created by periods of glaciation. Additionally, dams on the Missouri River create four large reservoirs: Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case, Lewis and Clark Lake. South Dakota can be divided into three regions: eastern South Dakota, western South Dakota, the Black Hills; the Missouri River serves as a boundary in terms of geographic and political differences between eastern and western South Dakota. The geography of the Black Hills, long considered sacred by Native Americans, differs from its surroundings to such an extent it can be considered separate from the rest of western South Dakota. At times the Black Hills are combined with the rest of western South Dakota, people refer to the resulting two regions divided by the Missouri River as West River and East River.
Eastern South Dakota features higher precipitation and lower topography than the western part of the state. Smaller geographic regions of this area include the Coteau des Prairies, the Dissected Till Plains, the James River Valley; the Coteau des Prairies is a plateau bordered on the east by the Minnesota River Valley and on the west by the James River Basin. Further west, the James River Basin is low, flat eroded land, following the flow of the James River through South Dakota from north to south; the Dissected Till Plains, an area of rolling hills and fertile soil that covers much of Iowa and Nebraska, extends into the southeastern corner of South Dakota. Layers deposited during the Pleistocene epoch, starting around two million years ago, cover most of eastern South Dakota; these are the youngest rock and sediment layers in the state, the product of several successive periods of glaciation which deposited a large amount of rocks and soil, known as till, over the area. The Great Plains cover most of the western two-thirds of South Dakota.
West of the Missouri Rive
