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Golden Gate Bridge, which opened in 1937 – a beautiful suspension bridge over the Golden Gate, a strait connecting San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Actually, the famous Golden Gate Bridge is red. On most mornings, clouds of fog roll under it.
The heart of San Francisco is Market Street, from which the city spreads to adjacent hillsides and on through Chinatown and the North Beach. Northwest of Chinatown is Russian Hill, so named because supposedly some Russian sailors had been buried here. It is a fashionable center for residences and artists’ studios. North Beach is known as the “Latin Quarter” with avant-garde theater, cosmopolitan cafes and restaurants. In the mid 1960s, the districts gave rise to hippies. With their celebration of free love, use of psychedelic drugs, and communal living, the hippies of the 1960s brazenly challenged the values of the “Establishment”. Heirs to the hipster beatniks of the previous decade, they first appeared on college campuses during the era of sit-ins and anti-Vietnam War protests. Their emphasis on environmental conservation, along with the communes they founded in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and many rural areas, has led historians to compare hippies with 19-century Utopian idealists. Many people dismissed hippies as dropouts, but no others they were the gentle conscience of a tumultuous period in American history. In the late 1960s, America was swept by college protests. These protests also began in the San Francisco area – at Berkley, the University of California, which has always been known for academic excellence. The University, charted in 1868, stands at the head of widespread system of public education.
The state system of higher education, like California’s population, is ever growing.
The University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, is one of the picks for the places creating buzz among students, parents and school officials. But unlike the snobbish and most selective Harvard and Yale, UCSD is the school that makes the grade and proves that science can be fun. On campus where a quarter of the $1.8 billion in revenue is federal research funds, and where there are eight Nobel laureates on the faculty, the science is also quite serious Welcoming undergrads into labs is a priority. The school raises the quality of undergraduate education by offering new science majors. Faculty and alumni have spun off nearly 200 companies, including about a third of the region’s biotech farms.
California is the state which is situated nearer to Hawaii (Honolulu) than any other state. However, they are not alike: Hawaii, 50th state to join (1959) the Union, is one of the smallest (1,600 miles from border to border) and least populated states. Crests of volcanoes taller than Mount Everest emerge over 3, 200 km out in the Pacific Ocean from the coast of California to form the 8 major and 100-odd minor Hawaiian islands, 7 inhabited. A racial mixture populates the inlands. It is a strategic US military outpost.
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The salaries of military personnel and civilians employed at the military bases constitute
Hawaii’s principal source of income. Agriculture is also important, as is tourism.
Pineapple plantations and Waikiki Beach are world known. People living here speak of the rest of the US as The Mainland.
Alaska and Hawaii and all other regions of the USA are in sharp contrast to each other. The geography and climate and kinds of people who have settled them have shaped their destinies differently. But all are bound together by a way of life that is American.
Questions
1. What is the country’s largest state? 2. Is California the most populous state? 3. When did the state get its first swarm of settlers? 4. What does the term “forty-niners” stand for? 5. Why is California seen as “the Promised Land” by many? 6. What are California’s pressing and complex problems? 7. What is Silicon Valley famous for? 8.What (who) is “Homo Siliconus”? 9. Where is the hottest and driest point in the USA? 10. Which city is the most ‘Spanish’? 11. What’s the capital city of California? 12. Which is the nation’s third largest city: San Francisco or Los Angeles? 13. How did
Hollywood get its name? 14. Why is California called the educational center? 15. What makes San Francisco an unusual and picturesque city? 16. What is the city’s symbol? 17. When and where did hippies appear? What lifestyles and beliefs did they share? 18. What makes Hawaii a strategic US military outpost? 19. What do California and Hawaii have in common?
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS REGION
includes five states: Montana(Helena),Idaho(Boise), Wyoming (Cheyenne), Utah(Salt Lake City) and Colorado(Denver). This is the least well-defined of the regions. The people of its three states – Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana - are much more interested in their own identity than in the development of a regional sense. The mixture of the peoples is as representative of the nation as a whole as that of the central
Midwest, their attitudes have always reflected the region’s extreme topography and climate. The region is very sparsely populated. It is a long drive between the few towns (most of which are small) on the plains. Most of the population is engaged in mining, cattle-breeding and farming. It is a frontier area, the true home of the cowboy and the sheepherder. Farms are huge here200 hectares or more, worked by one man. He is a scientific farmer who plants a variety of crops and enriches the soil. He may hire a crew with a giant combine harvester in the summer but that’s all. And the rancher runs his cattle carefully to preserve the land. Tourism is very important. People come here for sports such as skiing, fishing, hiking, climbing, and riding and to enjoy the beautiful
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scenery. In Montana (Treasure State) from Glacier Park, there are fine views of mountain lakes and glaciers. Here you may see a bald eagle, the American national bird, restored ghost towns – clusters of weathered wooden buildings in the gulches - where people once came to pan for gold. Today, you can walk the wooden side-walks and peer into saloons and stores. Almost every town in Montana has rodeo. Gold opened the territory to settlement in the 1890s, mineral riches still abound. In Wyoming, there is Yellowstone National Park -a broad volcanic plateau surrounded by mountain ranges. The park has several lakes and the famous Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone - 30 km long, its walls reaching a height of 370 m. The walls of volcanic rock display shades of yellow, red, orange, and brown, and rugged rock formations take on unusual shapes. Another feature of the park is Obsidian Cliff, a mountain of volcanic black glass and one of the largest deposits of obsidian in North America. Yellowstone has more than 10,000 thermal sites. These include more than 300 geysers as well as hot springs, mud volcanoes (known as paint pots), and fumaroles (vents issuing gasses and steam). The most famous geyser called Old Faithful, erupts on the average of every 75 minutes for up to 5 minutes, shooting a column of hot water as high as 50 m. Mineral deposits from the waters of the hot springs have formed cones and terraces. Wyoming is second only to Texas in wool production. Idaho is the land of resorts such as Sun Valley; the Snake River at Hell’s Canyon has cut a 7,900-foot chasm – the nation’s deepest canyon. In Colorado live two-thirds of the population. Great rivers flow toward the Mississippi and
Gulf of Mexico; the world’s highest suspension bridge crosses the Arkansas River at
Royal Gorge. An aerial tram-way runs beside the bridge. Colorado is the state of the highest mountains. The metals mined here are used in rocketry. Denver is a large city. A manufacturing and meat-packing center, it sits 1,000 meters above sea level in the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains. Utah is a treasure-trove of nearly every mineral used by industry. The southeast Idaho and Utah are the Mormon Region. Utah was settled by Mormon pioneers led by Brigham Young in 1847 in the New England tradition, as a model state based on particular religious vision. Aside from the region’s overwhelming adherence to the Mormon religion, it is notable for very high educational and health standards. The emphasis on family and community has also led to a high birthrate. The Mormon settled in the desert by an enormous salty inland sea and established Salt Lake City that remains the heart of the Mormon movement.
Questions
1. What states make up the Rocky Mountain Region? 2. Is the Rocky Mountain Region most well-defined of all the areas? 3. What have peoples attitudes always reflected? 4.
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Is it a densely or sparsely populated region? 5. What is most of the population engaged in? 6. What are ghost towns? 7. What opened the territory to settlement? 8. Where is the Yellowstone? What is remarkable about it? 9. Who settled Utah and the southeast Idaho? What are these areas notable for? 10. Are there people in your country who would share Mormon beliefs and values?
THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
includes three states Washington(Olympia), Oregon(Salem) and Alaska(Juneau). The Pacific Coast from San Francisco to Seattle, was first reached by English, Russian and other explorers. Some established fur trading posts. The settlers found there rich soil, abundant water and rather mild climate. This region is noted for its natural beauty. The coastal part of this region is more populated than the interior. The politics of the region has tended to be moderate and liberal. The society is homogeneous, largely white, and environment and wilder-ness-concerned. Washington (Nickname: Evergreen State) is the only state named after a president; it is leader in nuclear research, lumbering, apples and wheat production. Oregon (Beaver State) is the nation’s lumber state. Portland and Seattle are important ports for trade with Asia. Seattle is located on six hills overlooking Elliot Bay. It is one of the great timber regions of the United States, but it is also known for many other varied production activities. On Lake Washington is the campus of the
University of Washington. Seattle’s other institutions of higher education include Seattle University and Seattle Pacific University. It is a city of many cultural assets. Seattle is a gateway to Alaska. You must drive through Canada or take a boat or airplane to get to Alaska.
Alaska’s nickname is the Great Land. The name of the state is derived from an Aleut word meaning “mainland”. It is both a state and a region. It is the first among the states in area (twice as big as its nearest size-rival, Texas), last in population. It is still a frontier area with a low percentage of native-born aside from the Indians and Eskimos. It has a glacier as large as Rhode Island, a national monument (Katmai) almost as big as
Connecticut, and North America’s highest peak, 20,320-foot Mount McKinley. William
H. Seward, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. At the time, and decades afterward, many Americans used the derisive name
Seward ‘s Folly or Seward’s Icebox for what they thought was a value less region of ice and snow. In 1912, the US Congress established Alaska as a US territory. In 1959 Alaska became the 49th state of the USA. Among the natives are Eskimos (or, as they prefer to be called, Inuit), Indians, and Aleuts. Alaska’s largest cities are Anchorage,
Fairbanks, Juneau (the state capital), Sitka. The State Flag is a deep blue field with seven gold stars in the shape of the Big Dipper constellation at the left and a single gold
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star representing Polaris (the North Star) in the upper right-hand corner. Alaska’s chief executive is a governor, selected to a 4-year term and may not serve more than two consecutive terms. Alaska is represented in the US Congress by two senators and one representative. It is a leading state in commercial fishing and forest products. Alaska’s economy is known mainly for exploration of mineral resources. The discovery of vast oil deposits on the north in the 1960s and production of petroleum on the Arctic coast resulted in construction of 1,300km pipeline. Petroleum and gas are by far Alaska’s most important mineral resources which attract newcomers. Oil revenues enabled the state to abolish its personal income tax and to distribute annual cash dividends to all state residents. Because of its severe climate and the high cost of living it seems unlikely to soon become a stable cultural area, though tourism has developed into a major industry.
Questions
1. What states does the Pacific Northwest consist of? 2. What is this region noted for? 3. Is society of the region heterogeneous? 4. What makes the region different from the Rocky Mountain Region? 5. How did Alaska become a USA’s state? 6. What does the name “Alaska” mean? 7. Which state is larger: Alaska or California? 8. How is Alaska represented in the US Congress? How many has it there? 9. What is Alaska’s economy based on? 10. What is the capital city of Alaska?
THE NEW MEGALOPOLISES
In recent decades, metropolitan areas (cities plus suburban rings) have expanded and grown so large that they have overlapped, and have begun to merge. This new urban network has been called “megalopolis,” a term coined by Jean Gottman to identify the largest of these sprawling regions occupying an area on the Atlantic seaboard from north of Boston, through New York, south to Washington, D.C. – “Bonywash”, economic power corridor. Around the world, cities have grown together to form giant urban galaxies. Growth and innovation these days come from “urban corridors”- the booming mega-regions (in fact, nations don’t spur growth so much as dynamic regions). The New Megas are the real economic-organizing units of the world, powerful complexes of multiple cities and suburbs, bound together by many economic and social relationships, forming a vast expanse of trade, transport, producing the bulk of its wealth, attracting a large share of its talents and generating the lion’s share of innovation. The great urbanologist Jane Jacobs was the first to describe why megalopolices grow. When people cluster in one place, they all become more productive. Mass production and distribution of necessary goods are best accomplished