Outline of America's Landforms and Climate

European settlers first set foot in the territory that would become the US and found a plain, facing the Atlantic. That Coastal Plain stretches from the mouth of Hudson River to the Mexican border at Rio Grande. In colonial times the Atlantic coastline presented difficulties for sailors. It was dangerous to approach the shore for the shallow waters and numerous islands. Deep water anchorage was possible only in rare bays, which actually are the drowned river mouths. In fact, from New York southward all of the nation's big coastal towns were necessarily located at the farthest inland of the bays. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville are the most obvious examples.
The interior lowlands are called the midland or the Midwest. It is the core, the heartland of the country. The Mississippi river is the traditional dividing line between "East" and "West". But it is the Great Plains that symbolize the beginning of the West to the Americans.
The Grand Canyon of Arizona, the national parks and public preserves of Colorado Plateau with its breathtaking canyons and very colourful rocks — red, yellow, orange, brown and even green and blue.
In fact the Cordillera is a great western mountain system consisting of a number of high ranges. On the east are the Rocky Mountains, on the west the Coast Ranges, the Sierra Nevada of California and the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. Unlike the Cordillera, the Appalachian Mountains in the east are fairly low. It is the oldest mountain system in the US. Four parallel mountain belts alternating with valleys of best soils in eastern North America make up the Appalachians.
As far as the climate is concerned, the American East is called "the humid East". It's almost half of the US territory.
American western air comes not from the ocean, but from the continent — extremely cold in winter, ovenlike in summer. Europe, with its mild oceanic temperatures has a "marine" climate. Americans have the similar climate in their own Pacific Northwest. That is where the climate strongly resembles Britain.
The climate of eastern and central America is "continental" and more resembles Russia. But the farther to the south the warmer. There are four climatic zones within the humid East. The northernmost zone is a region of northern forest that stretches from Maine across northern New England and the upper Great Lakes. The growing season is very short, the winter's long and very cold. Most of the population depends on mining ore, forestry and on recreation. Most of it rjemains poor country and sparsely populated. Southward is America's rural North — a kind of agricultural New Jerusalem. It's a region of mixed forest. Summers are hotter and longer there than in Europe, and American crops yield more bountifully.
Still farther southward s the "humid subtropical forest" region, with its hot humid summers. Americans call this region "the South".
The growing season is long enough for subtropical crops to be grown, such as indigo, rice and cotton. The South was the richest region in former times. Now it is not so rich as it used to be. Even less than that. It remains the poorest region in the nation.
The plantation system rested on slavery. America imported African slaves. Slave labour was much cheaper than free, white labour. The fact prevented the growth of white immigration and the growth of cities and towns. The South remained rural region. The profits from cotton were so great that it was grown without erosion control and soon much farmland was exhausted and ruined.
Furthermore the competition with Indian and Egyptian cotton put an end to the America's cotton growing monopoly. The South went bankrupt. Beginning with World War I many poor people, most of them black, began moving to northern cities to find work. Meantime most of the old cotton country turned to pine woods and into pasture for cattle industry. Just another example of how nature revenges itself upon people for neglecting environmental protection. Besides the slavery in the long run affected destructively the human society.