List of U.S. States By Coastline

List Of U.S. States By Coastline

This is a list of U.S. states having an ocean coastline, ranked by coastline length.

Two different methods are used; the main difference is whether to count tidal areas as coastline - for example, method 2 counts the Great Bay as part of New Hampshire's coastline, but method 1 does not. The figures suffer from the inaccuracy inherent in all attempts at measuring coastlines but are nevertheless useful for comparison.

• The data for method 1 was retrieved from a CRS Report for Congress using data from U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, The Coastline of the United States, 1975. This is based on measurements made using large-scale nautical charts. The figure for Connecticut was arrived at separately and may not reflect the correct comparative distance.
• The data for method 2 is from a list maintained by the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The state coastline lengths were computed by an unspecified method which include tidal areas not included in the first method. These numbers also include the Great Lakes coastlines.