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About This Quiz
The United States of America has evolved from a few small colonies on the East Coast to a vast stripe across the continent. It contains broad mountain ranges, unending swamps, deadly deserts, rolling hills and plains as far as the eye can see. It has volcanoes, fault lines and ancient lakes. With so much land, the U.S. has an endless supply of fascinating geographic features, and not all of those geographic features are natural. The U.S. government and private industry have changed the physical face of the land in ways unimaginable at the time of its founding.
Knowing the geography one encounters daily is difficult enough! Remembering that of the whole nation is a truly epic challenge. It means thinking of the land first as a place free of state lines and names but as a place of shapes and natural forces. Our understanding of American geography has changed over the years, as science refines its point of view on things as diverse as the formations of canyons and the place of ancient seas. America cries out to be known! Can you rise to the challenge and ace this geography quiz?
New Jersey
For a long time, New Jersey was farmland that provided much needed agricultural goods to east coast states. As a result, it earned its nickname, "The Garden State".
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Arkansas
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Kilauea
Mount Rainier
Mount Redoubt
Mount St. Helens
While by no means the largest volcano in the U.S., Mount St. Helens remains one of the nation's most dangerous. On May 18, 1980, geologic forces caused the mountain to crack, releasing a pyroclastic flow which knocked down trees for 230 square miles and traveled at 300 mph.
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North
East
West
South
The mighty Mississippi was one of the nation's first major "highways" as it was used to transport goods from the industrial north to ports on the Gulf Coast. It starts in Lake Itaska, Minnesota and finishes up in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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Mount Saint Elias
Mount Bear
Mount Blackburn
Denali
With a towering height of 20,310 feet above sea level, Denali is the tallest mountain in the United States. Located in Alaska, Denali is among the top-ten tallest mountains in the U.S., all of which are in Alaska! The tallest in the lower 48 states is Mount Whitney.
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Wyoming
Though not a technical term, Tornado Alley has been popularly defined as including Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, the Dakotas, Texas, Oklahoma and, most famously, Kansas. The Great Plains are well known for having just the right composition needed to produce tornadoes.
Texas
Oklahoma
Kansas
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Lake Placid
Crater Lake
Lake Huron
Great Salt Lake
The Great Salt Lake is, unlike the rest of these, an endorheic basin. An endorheic basin is essentially a lake that has no outflowing element, so it waxes and wanes based on rainfall and evaporation. The Great Salt Lake is the largest of these in the nation, and none of these other bodies are at all.
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Michigan
Washington, D.C.
New York
South Dakota
The carvings are located in Keystone, South Dakota, in the Black Hills of the Lakota Sioux. The original plan for Mount Rushmore was to carve full-length figures out of the mountainside. Inasmuch as the monument is carved into a sacred mountain, a monument to the First Nations is in progress on a nearby mountain, the work of a single man.
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles may be a busy metropolis, but underground, it is unique among American cities. It has oil, as anyone who has seen its nodding donkeys will attest, and it was the site of a massive tar pit in the age of dinosaurs in which various ancient creatures found themselves trapped. You can visit the pits today (shown here in 1910) and see them still bubbling away, and you can see the remains found there preserved in museums.
Albuquerque
Pheonix
Las Vegas
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Vermont
North Dakota
Alaska
Maine
Encompassing the tallest east coast mountains, Acadia National Park consists mostly of the islands off the coast of Maine, including Mount Desert Island. It is all the best natural sights and experienced in Maine, except perhaps for ski mountains.
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Cold winter desert
Hot-and-dry desert
For the most part, the deserts of the Southwest qualify, unsurprisingly, as hot-and-dry deserts. That said, unlike the image, many have of desert lands like those in the Middle East. Southwestern deserts are not all sand dunes and desolation. In fact, they're teeming with life!
Coastal desert
Polar desert
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Boca Raton, Florida
Bangor, Maine
Cape Canaveral, Florida
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan is unique in that it is populated almost entirely by U.S. citizens, as all Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and as a U.S. territory, it counts for the purpose of this question. San Juan is the island nation's largest city.
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Furnace Creek Airport, California
Furnace Creek Airport is the lowest airport or airfield in the United States, at an elevation of 210 feet below sea level. By comparison, the bottom of Lake Superior is 732 feet below sea level.
JFK Airport, New York
Logan International Airport, Massachusetts
LAX Airport, California
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The Gateway Arch
American Samoa
Central Park
National parks come in all shapes and sizes and all over the land the USA is responsible for. Big Bend is more or less what one imagines when one thinks of a national park, and it's located in Texas. The Gateway Arch is a small national park, to take care of the monument. American Samoa was established as a national park to protect its environment. Central Park is not a national park.
Big Bend
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Nevada
Montana
Wyoming
California
Yosemite National Park is located in eastern California. Containing some of the most jaw-dropping views of any national park, it sees millions of visitors every year, attracted by its mountains and iconic giant sequoia.
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It was the scene of a bloody battle.
It is where there was a terrible airplane crash.
It is at the center of a fault line that could cause an earthquake capable of splitting the continent in half.
It is a super-volcano.
Yellowstone National Park's famous geyser "Old Faithful" is powered by chambers in the ground filled with water, heated by magma in chambers in the crust. The entire park is a giant volcano, but don't worry! It last erupted in 664,000 years ago.
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Vermont
California
Florida
New York
The Ramapo Seismic Zone, which runs through New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had its last major quake in 1884, a 5.5. With sections running from the outer boroughs through Manhattan at 125th Street, the city tried to build its infrastructure with this in mind, but given their knowledge of earthquakes at the time, these landmarked structures are designed to be destroyed.
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They are part of the Rocky Mountains.
They are not mountains.
They are part of the Adirondack Mountains.
They are part of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Appalachian Mountains are a huge range, stretching from the south up through Maine. They include the Berkshires, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Green Mountains, the Longfellow Mountains and the White Mountains,
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The San Andreas Fault
The Long Line
The Coast of Fire
The Ring of Fire
The Ring of Fire is the name given to the circle of volcanoes surrounding the Pacific Ocean. The Ring of Fire includes volcanoes formed in Russia, Japan, Alaska, Canada, the lower 48 states, South America and various South Pacific atolls and islands.
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South Dakota
Oregon
Wisconsin
While Oregon and South Dakota's northern borders are at more or less the same latitude, Wisconsin comes out ahead as the northernmost of these states. North Carolina, of course, is much further south.
North Carolina
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Bryce Canyon
Mesa Grande
The Rio Grande
The Grand Canyon
There are dueling theories about the origins of the Grand Canyon, though such was not always the case. Some believe it was carved over millions of years by the Colorado river slowly wearing away at the land. A more recent theory gaining traction is that it was created in a single massive event when an ice wall holding in an ancient Great Lake gave way, and the force of the water released carved the canyon.
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Ka Lae, Hawaii
While Brownsville is the southernmost city in Texas, Border Field State Park, California is the southernmost point in California and Key West has a marker pointing out the southernmost place in the contiguous 48 states. Ka Lae, Hawaii is the southernmost point in all 50 states.
Brownsville, Texas
Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park, Florida
Border Field State Park, California
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Port of Los Angeles
While all of these ports are very busy, it is the Port of Los Angeles that takes the cake. The Port of Los Angeles sits on 7,500 acres and covers 43 miles of waterfront. Approximately $1.2 Billion of cargo passes through this port every day.
Port of Houston
Port of Virginia
Port of New York & New Jersey
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The New Madrid Seismic Zone
The Ramapo Seismic Zone
The Denali Fault System
The Cascadia Subduction Zone
The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a fault line that runs along the West Coast, in the ocean. When it "snaps" back from its subduction action, it causes huge underwater earthquakes, which in turn cause massive tsunamis. The last one was in 1700 A.D.
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A desert
A forest
A swamp
A wetland
The Florida Everglades, which includes The Everglades National Park, is a massive wetland region and the biggest subtropical wilderness left in the United States. Threatened by climate change, the Everglades we know today may someday exist only in memory.
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Tongass National Forest
While all of these forests are huge expanses of natural beauty available for Americans to see, Tongass National Forest is the largest. It should come as no surprise that Tongass National Forest and the runner up, Chugach National Forest, are both located in Alaska.
Salmon-Challis National Forest
Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest
Chugach National Forest
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Florida
Connecticut
Rhode Island
While there are nine states with panhandles, Rhode Island isn't one. Those states are, in alphabetical order, Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Maryland, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia.
Texas
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New Hampshire
New York
Iowa
None of the above
The Old Man of The Mountain was a proud geographic feature of New Hampshire which was, as the name suggests, a rock formation that appeared to be the profile of an old man. Long considered an icon of the state, it collapsed in 2003.
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New Jersey
Massachusetts
Connecticut
New York
This answer is complicated. Legally, as provided by lawsuits between New York and New Jersey, Liberty Island is in New Jersey, but only below water. All land above water, which is federally owned, is part of New York. Thus, the Statue of Liberty is in New York.
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The Channeled Scablands
In 1923, J Harlen Bretz theorized that the Channeled Scablands of Washington State were created by a massive dam breaking around an ancient ice lake, releasing a torrent that created cavitation so strong it carved a huge area of Washington's landscape. At the time, Bretz was considered a fantasist, but as of the early 1970s, his theory is the accepted one.
The Sierra Mountains
The Mississsippi River
The Gulf of Mexico
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The Ted Williams Tunnel and Interstate 90 Extension
The Ted Williams Tunnel and Interstate 90 Extension, nicknamed "The Big Dig," was a famously long-lived municipal infrastructure project that killed a driver on the day it opened, when a piece of concrete fell off the roof onto her car. It is over a mile and a half long.
The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel
The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel
The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel
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Rocky Mountains
Blue Mountains
Green Mountains
Adirondack Mountains
Once the site of the Olympic Winter Games, the Adirondacks are a beautiful range running through parts of upstate New York and Vermont. They inspired hikers to attempt to summit all 46 high peaks, starting in 1918 and continuing to this day. Hikers who achieve this feat become "46ers."
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U.S. Route 30
U.S. Route 10
U.S. Route 40
U.S. Route 20
U.S. Route 20 is the longest in the country, measuring 3,365 miles. The U.S. route-numbering system designates routes ending in a zero as coast to coast routes (in theory, anyway), and this one fulfills that promise, going from Oregon to Massachusetts.
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It is near the geographic center of the lower 48 states.
Just over two and a half miles from Lebanon, Kansas is the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states of the U.S. This strange fact, a reason to visit Lebanon, was established by a survey of the country in 1918.
It is the geographic center of the lower 48 states.
It is the geographic center of all 50 states.
It is the birthplace of Mary Todd Lincoln.
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Great Basin Desert
The Great Basin Desert is absolutely massive, at over 190,000 square miles. It is followed closely by the Chihuahuan Desert at 139,769 square miles, the Sonoran Desert at 100,000 square miles and the Mojave Desert at 47,877 square miles.
Chihuahuan Desert
Mojave Desert
Sonoran Desert
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Bass Tremor
Double Mushroom Plume
Magma Lake
Harmonic Tremor
Scientists have been giving special attention to Mount Redoubt since its 2009 eruption, which was preceded by what can best be described as a scream coming from the volcano before silence and its eruption. This was actually a series of overlapping tremors signaling the coming eruption and may lead to better ways of predicting eruptions.
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