Geography and American Destiny

John Steele Gordon:

Imagine that North America was somehow flipped, so that East was West and West was East. The continent's West Coast, as we know it, would face the Atlantic and Europe. That would have greatly affected the history of this country.

Before the Industrial Revolution, bulk goods such as grain and lumber moved by water or they did not move. People and news also traveled fastest by boat.

The East Coast is rich in harbors large and small. Its many rivers are navigable, some for hundreds of miles inland.

The Pacific Coast of the U.S. is practically a blank wall, with high mountains that often hug the coastline. It has only three good natural harbors along its entire length--Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, and San Diego Bay. Only one river that flows into the Pacific, the Columbia, has deep water for more than a few miles inland. Its mouth, however, is blocked by a sand bar that has brought many a ship to grief.

Settling along the West Coast would have been difficult, developing a viable economy there equally so. But because of the East Coast's water communications, commerce thrived in the British colonies and the settlements served as bases for exploring and occupying the interior. A further advantage: The wide alluvial plains east of the Appalachians made farming easy.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 2, 2014 12:55 AM
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