Ask people to draw the USA and most sketch a rectangle between two oceans. That rectangle is only the contiguous part. The state reaches farther north and farther into the Pacific.
This state has two land neighbours: Canada to the north, Mexico to the south. Alaska has its own very long border with Canada. Hawaii has none. The mental map often knows only the southern border.
United States at a glance
Capital
Washington, D.C.
Area
9,372,610 km²
Population
341.8 million
Official language(s)
English
Currency
US dollar
Continent
Americas
Distinctive fact
Two states outside the contiguous slab
The lower 48 are a habit
The contiguous states sit between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Washington, D.C., the capital, sits on the east coast, not in the middle. The geographic centre of the lower 48 is in the Midwest. The political centre sits where the capital was placed in 1790.
341.8 million people live on 9,372,610 square kilometres. A large share of them in a strip near the coasts and the Great Lakes. The space between is not empty, but it does not carry the population the area seems to promise.
The rectangle map is convenient. The state did not keep to it.
— TerraTally · Countries desk
Alaska and Hawaii are not extras
Alaska became the 49th state in 1959, Hawaii the 50th the same year. Both sit outside the rectangle map and change what the country is: an Arctic territory facing the Bering Strait, and a Polynesian island state that maps often tuck in a box beside Mexico.
Puerto Rico, Guam and other territories belong to the state without being states. Count only 50 stars and you leave out citizens who hold the same passport and do not hold the same rights in Congress. Again the map in the head is more generous than the franchise.
A language that was never the only one
English is the working language of the federal government. There is no single official language written into federal law. Spanish is daily speech in the Southwest and Florida; indigenous languages live on reservations and in cities; Hawaiian is co-official in Hawaii. The state sounds more uniform than it speaks.
The time zones of the lower 48 run from the east coast to the Pacific. Alaska and Hawaii sit farther still. An evening newsreader in New York speaks to people for whom the sun is still high. The rectangle in the head has one clock. The state has several.
The United States are easy to draw as a rectangle and wrong as soon as Alaska and Hawaii count. The state has two neighbours on the mainland and two oceans that are not just a backdrop.