United States
In the United States the meridian 100° west of Greenwich forms the eastern border of the Texas panhandle with Oklahoma (which traces its origin to the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1819 which settled the border between New Spain and the United States between the Red River and Arkansas River). Dodge City, Kansas lies exactly at the intersection of the Arkansas River and the 100th meridian.
In the central Great Plains, the meridian roughly marks the western boundary of the normal reach of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and the approximate boundary (although some areas do push the boundary slightly farther east) between the semi-arid climate to the west and the humid continental (north of about 37°N) and humid subtropical (south of about 37°N) climates to the east. The type of agriculture west of the meridian typically relies heavily on irrigation. Historically the meridian has often been taken as a rough boundary between the eastern and western United States. White settlement, spreading westward after the American Civil War, encroached in the meridian in the 1870s.
A sign across U.S. Highway 30 in Cozad, Nebraska prominently marks the place where the meridian intersects the routes of the Oregon Trail, Pony Express, transcontinental railroad, and the Lincoln Highway.
Read more about this topic: 100th Meridian West
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Printer, philosopher, scientist, author and patriot, impeccable husband and citizen, why isn’t he an archetype? Pioneers, Oh Pioneers! Benjamin was one of the greatest pioneers of the United States. Yet we just can’t do with him. What’s wrong with him then? Or what’s wrong with us?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Then the American flag was saluted. In general, in the United States people always salute the American flag.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)