Geography and History of Mount Whitney and the Trail of Tears

Geography of the United States

• Mount Whitney is the highest point in the contiguous United States.
• The Mojave Desert is an arid rain-shadow desert, covering 124,000 km² in southeastern California, southern Nevada, and small areas of Utah and Arizona.
• The Great Salt Lake is located in Utah, covering 4,400 km² and is six times saltier than the ocean.
• The Great Lakes are a group of five large freshwater lakes in central North America, holding about 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water.

American Civilizations

• The Trail of Tears was the route used to remove the Cherokee Nation from Georgia to Oklahoma in the 1830s, resulting in the deaths of over 4,000 out of 15,000 Cherokees.
• The National Park System consists of 423 sites in the U.S. and its territories, initially inhabited by various Indian tribes.
• The first national park, Yellowstone, was established in 1872 as an ideal tourist attraction, leading to the removal of Native Indians from their lands.

Expansion of the United States

• The country enlarged from 13 states in 1776 to the present-day territory through several land purchases and treaties.
• The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the size of the U.S., extending west to the Rocky Mountains.
• The Republic of Texas was annexed from Mexico in 1845, and the Mexican-American War led to the addition of several states, including Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and western Colorado.

Mountain Systems

• The Appalachian Mountains are a great highland system of North America, stretching 3,200 km from Canada to central Alabama.
• The Rocky Mountains are a major upland system in the west, stretching 4,800 km from northern Alberta and British Columbia to New Mexico.