DIA Project: Legal Territory of the United States

Part of my Democracy in America Project:

The United States of America has vast, and somewhat complicated territorial dominion. The United States is comprised of:

• 48 Contiguous States, that run as far south as 24° 33′ N and as far north as 49°23′ 4.1″N. The Contiguous States border Canda to the north and Mexico to the south. The “Gulf Coast States” are also separated by a short boat trip from a significant portion of the islands of the Caribbean. The eastern and western borders of the contiguous United States are bordered by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
• 2 Non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska is roughly 500 miles north from the contiguous states, and it contains the Westernmost cities on the North American Continent. Alaska is almost twice the size of the largest single contiguous state (Texas) and larger than all but 18 sovereing nations on its own.  Hawaii, is a series of islands in the central pacific Ocean. There are eight major Hawaiian islands in its archipelago, but there are many more smaller islands in the chain that are sovereign United States territory as well.
• Several major island territories – including Puerto Rico and the United States Virign Islands chain in the Carribean Sea, and the South Pacific Islands of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana. 
• Several minor island territories – including Baker, Wake, Midway islands and other uninhabited islands and atolls in the South Pacific.
•  Military bases and strategic commands that are sovereing territory on the five major continents, and on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States exercises a travel embargo to the rest of the island.
• The United States expresses a right to claim the Antarctic Continent but has not done so. The United States has jointly managed the legal status of Antarctic, primarily for scientific and exploratory purposes.
• The United States is one of two nations to land objects on the surface of the moon, though they have signed treatises promising to make no territorial claims, their landing sites do not overalp with the landing sites of the USSR, indicating that in the era of moon landings, there was a de facto recogniton of different territory. What that might mean today is unclear.  

In covering this territory, the United States has technology to cover distances like never before. Telecommunications, orbital satellite technology, nuclear powered watercraft, highly reliable air travel, and a vast motor infrastructure allow for the massive transport of persons, goods, and information accross its dominion in speedsand variety that were not possible even one decade earlier. 

That’s all I can write for now, more to come.