America how many states are there

Including Puerto Rico, 14 territories are overseen by the United States. Some of these territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the U. Additionally, Midway Atoll and Palmyra Atoll are also inhabited, but have populations of less than people.

The majority of these territories are located in the Pacific Ocean. World View. The District of Columbia. Puerto Rico Many people mistake Puerto Rico for a state, but it's actually a territory. Four of the 50 states include the term "Commonwealth" in their official names, which references the English term for a political community founded for the common good.

Those four states are Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. From the time the first state was established in the U. Prior to , the previous states admitted to the union were New Mexico and Arizona, which occurred in The U. From then on D. Learn more about the capital below. The United States government, from its very beginnings, was built around representing the fifty states both equally in the Senate and proportionally in the House.

This balance of protecting the interests of smaller states while also listening to the majority has had lasting impacts on the U. Find out more about these and other important institutions. The history of human societies within the states' territory stretches back millennia, but the history of the United States itself is quite recent. In the years since the foundation was laid at St.

Augustine, the United States has grown and expanded into one of the world's largest and wealthiest nations. Learn more about the tumultuous journey from then to now with our timelines and articles. Perhaps more than in countries with stable long-term populations and settlement patterns, the United States has grown in leaps and bounds.

From the waves of immigration, colonial border disputes, and the forced relocation of populations, the United States has developed very different populations across its diverse landscape. Meet the people of the U. Virgin Islands. Maps and flags both have played important historic roles in economic matters and in matters of identity. Every state has their own flag and their own defined territories.

Learn more about the fifty states with our collections of maps and flags below. The regions of the U. Despite having little to no legal meaning, these regions mark important cultural boundaries between areas with common culture and history. The Southwest, for example, has much more influence from the Mexican settlers who lived there before the U. Explore the different regions, as well as U. The United States is liberally sprinkled with monuments, parks, and all sorts of impressive structures from Yellowstone, the first national park in the West, to the Gateway Arch in St.

Let Infoplease be your guide to some of America's greatest landmarks. There are 48 contiguous states , plus Alaska located in the far northwestern part of North America and Hawaii located in the mid-Pacific. The United States also has five major territories and various islands. Mexico borders it to the south and Canada to the north. Unsurprisingly, the thirteen colonies were the first thirteen states to be ratified. The first states to be ratified were Delaware , New Jersey , and Pennsylvania in Alaska and Hawaii, the only states that are not part of the mainland United States, were the last states admitted in Alaska is the largest state in the United States, spanning over , square miles.