The Northwest Coast is the coastal region of the Pacific Northwest, and the Northwest Plateau (also commonly known as "
the Interior" in British Columbia), is the inland region. The term "Pacific Northwest" should not be confused with the
Northwest Territory (also known as the Great Northwest, a historical term in the United States) or the
Northwest Territories of
Canada. The region is sometimes referred to as Cascadia, which, depending on the borders, may or may not be the same thing as the Pacific Northwest.
The region's largest metropolitan areas are
Greater Seattle, Washington, with 4 million people;
Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, with 2.84 million people; and
Greater Portland, Oregon, with 2.5 million people.
The culture of the Pacific Northwest is influenced by the
Canada–United States border, which the United States and the
United Kingdom established at a time when the region's inhabitants were composed mostly of
indigenous peoples. Two sections of the border—one along the
49th parallel south of British Columbia and one between the
Alaska Panhandle and northern British Columbia—have left a great impact on the region. According to Canadian historian
Ken Coates, the border has not merely influenced the Pacific Northwest—rather, "the region's history and character have been determined by the boundary". (Full article...)
The Seattle Center Monorail is an
elevated straddle-beam
monorail line in
Seattle, Washington, United States. The 0.9-mile (1.4 km) monorail runs along 5th Avenue between
Seattle Center and
Westlake Center in
Downtown Seattle, making no intermediate stops. The monorail is a major
tourist attraction but also operates as a regular
public transit service with trains every ten minutes running for up to 16 hours per day. It was constructed in eight months at a cost of $4.2 million for the 1962
Century 21 Exposition, a
world's fair hosted at Seattle Center. The monorail underwent major renovations in 1988 after the southern terminal was moved from its location over
Pine Street to inside the Westlake Center shopping mall.
The system retains its original fleet of two
Alweg trains from the world's fair; each carries up to 450 people. It is owned by the city government, which designated the tracks and trains as a
historic landmark in 2003. A private contractor has operated the system since 1994, when it replaced
King County Metro, the county's public transit system. The monorail carries approximately two million people annually and earns a profit split between the contractor and the city government. The monorail usually operates with one train per track, and the entire trip takes approximately two minutes. Several major accidents have occurred during the system's half-century in service, including a train-to-train collision in 2005 on a
gauntlet track near the Westlake Center terminal. (Full article...)
The following are images from various Pacific Northwest-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Magnetic anomalies around the Juan de Fuca and Gorda Ridges, off the west coast of North America, color coded by age. (from Geology of the Pacific Northwest)
Image 12Lumen Field, home of Seattle Seahawks and Sounders FC (from Pacific Northwest)
Image 13The Coast Mountains are heavily eroded by glaciers, including Mount Waddington (far background, center). (from Geology of the Pacific Northwest)
Image 17Map of "
megacity", showing population density (shades of yellow/brown), highways (red), and major railways (black). Public land shown in shades of green. (from Pacific Northwest)
Image 23Public transportation is used in the Pacific Northwest region. Vancouver's
SkyTrain rapid transit system achieves daily ridership of over 500,000 passengers per day on weekdays and the overall transit ridership levels in the
Metro Vancouver area rank third in North America per capita. (from Pacific Northwest)
Image 32None of the multiple possible definitions of the Pacific Northwest is universally accepted. This map shows three possibilities: (1) The shaded area shows the historical
Oregon Country. (2) The green line shows the
Cascadia bioregion. (3) The labeled states and provinces include Washington, Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia. (from Pacific Northwest)
Image 33The immense floods created channels that are presently dry, such as the Drumheller Channels (from Geology of the Pacific Northwest)
... that the only remaining artifact in the
ghost town of Fremont, Oregon, is a
juniper stump notched with steps that women travelers used to mount horses in a modest fashion?
... that when Oregon journalist Larry Smyth was asked who he thought would win presidential elections, he invariably replied "the man who gets the most votes"?