The textbook defines Hawaii as a string of islands and reefs 2050 miles long in the mid-Pacific beginning in the east with the big island of Hawaii and ending almost at the International Date Line beyond Midway Island with a small speck in the ocean called Kure Atoll.
A beautiful Sunset on the Big Island.
Hawaii and Washington D.C. could not be more different. Hawaii is a lush, tropical island with pristine beaches and near perfect weather in the Pacific Ocean. Washington D.C. is near the Atlantic Ocean, located somewhat inland, and experiences very hot summers and very cold winters. The lifestyle in Hawaii is calm and laid back, while people in D.C. are rushed, busy, and stressed. The two are physically far apart as well-4835 miles to be exact.
Washington D.C. and....
Hawaii. Very different yes?
An eruption from Kilauea volcano.
Additionally, very much unlike D.C., Hawaii has several active massive volcanoes. The volcanic activity that created the islands continues there today. Several Islands on the Big Island Remain active. Mauna Loa spouts lava about once every 4 years, and Kilauea is active only about once every 7 years.
Information from Textbook and Hawaii Wikipedia page.
This chapter focuses on the North Pacific Coast, a region that extends from the very top of Northern California along the coast of Oregon, most of Washington, and through Canada into Alaska. This region is particularly known for its physical environment. Since it is mostly coastal, it is strongly subject to maritime influences and is pervaded by dramatically rugged terrain. Because precipitation is high, lush vegetation is found near the coast, but variations in flora and fauna exists over short distances.
An important part of the North Pacific Coast's economy is fishing. The North Pacific's cold water were, and to an extent still are, fertile fishing grounds. Salmon has been the fish of greatest import in the North Pacific Coast for a long time. It was a major food and economic mainstay of coastal tribes before Europeans arrived and is still the principal fish caught in the region.
Chinook Salmon--a type of Salmon found in the North Pacific Coast's waters.
Though D.C. is not a hub for commercial fishing, fishing hobbyists come out to D.C. to fish for fun. Fishing in the District of Columbia may be limited (as there are no lakes), but the area still offers quality fishing. The Potomac River, its tributaries and Rock Creek make up all the best fishing ground.
The fish found in D.C.'s rivers are: Bass, Catfish, Panfish, and Crappie.
Many people who fish in D.C. fish for Bass, a highly sought after fish. Bass is quite prolific in
the Potomac River.
A man catches a Bass in the Potomac
Additionally, hobbyist groups like the Potomac Bassmasters have formed in response to the fishing conditions in D.C. Potomac Bassmasters of Virginia (PBV) is one of the oldest bass angling clubs in the greater Washington, D.C. area. The club is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of bass fishing, conservation, and youth involvement in angling. Its members generally come from Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., and share a common passion for bass fishing.
Fishing in the Potomac
The PBV has been hosts fishing tournaments on the Potomac River, spons public events in support of the community, and holds an annual youth fishing derby. The Potomac River is PBV’s home water but club tournaments have been held in northern and southern Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Delaware and other regional locations.
This chapter is entirely dedicated to the great state of California (not that I'm bias or anything). This chapter covers almost everything about California-the physical geography, the climate, the cities, the tourism, the agriculture, the water supply, and transportation. In this post, I am choosing to focus on comparing the transportation and traffic congestion of Washington D.C. and Los Angeles.
LA Traffic
Having grown up in the L.A. area, I know the automobile culture that is so vital to Californians. The textbook states that, "today, nearly half the central portion of Los Angeles has been surrendered to the automobile, either for roads or parking. A dense system of freeways encourages high speed movement across the metropolitan region." The Los Angeles area has more cars per capita than any other part of the country, and only a minimal pubic transportation system exists. Anyone who has spent a couple hours in L.A. traffic can attest to this.
Even though D.C. has a much better public transportation system and not as many cars as Angelenos, D.C. still experiences a great amount of automobile congestion and traffic.
Going into and out of the city center can be painful. I checked a D.C. traffic report throughout the day, and streets/freeways going into and out of the city center did not change from the stop and go red.
According to the DCist, in 2007 D.C. was in a three way tie for second place in the contest for the Worst Traffic in the Nation award. They tied with Atlanta and the Bay Area--only Los Angeles beat them out. Washington D.C. also is one of the worst places to go during Thanksgiving. A study concluded that the interstate 95 corridor between Washington D.C. and New York City made the top slot for worst traffic during Thanksgiving.
Traffic on D.C. streets
To add to the congestion, any time a foreign dignitary or the president goes somewhere, streets are blocked off and traffic jams are exponentially increased.
A presidential motorcade causes more traffic in D.C.
Though D.C. has a much better public transportation system than LA, the city still endures large amounts of congestion.
The Southwest is a culture region distinguished by coexisting Spanish, American Indian, and Northwest European American people. Each group brings different cultures and characteristics that help make up the “melting pot” society of the Southwest.
Like the Southwest, Washington D.C. is an area with great cultural diversity. Unlike many American towns, it is a city without one homogeneous identity. The biggest indicator of this cultural diversity is that the minority populations in D.C. are much higher than in the rest of the country. Another huge difference is that white people are not the majority population in D.C. they make up 40.6% of the D.C. population compared to 79.6% overall in the U.S.
In 2009, the largest minority population in D.C. was the black population. In the district, black persons make up 54.9% of the population, as opposed to the general U.S. percentage of 12.9. It was the first city with a majority black population. Although numbers of black people are beginning to decline in the city, D.C. is an area where the minority black population is well represented. In this way, D.C. is a rich city with many different minority groups and races.
The East Coast, and especially D.C. enjoys a higher percentage of black population than the majority of the country.
The Empty Interior is defined by the textbook as a region of sparse population south of the Arctic. It stretches from the Rocky Mountains eastern slopes west to the Sierra Nevada of California, the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. Most inhabitants of the empty interior are of Northern European origin, although Hispanics and American Indians form significant proportions the south.
Though Washington D.C. is not in this region and enjoys a vast population unlike the Empty Interior, both regions are host to thousands of tourists every year.
The great variety and appeal of the scenic wonders in the Empty Interior attracts millions of visitors each year. Beautiful national parks like the Grand Canyon, bring thousands of tourists into the area that help support motels, snack bars, gift shops, and other service industries near these natural wonders. One of the most substantial places for tourism in the empty interior is Las Vegas. As soon as Nevada passed laws legalizing many forms of gambling and simplifying divorce proceedings, the state became the gambling and divorce capitol of the nation. People from all over the world and nation flock to Las Vegas for it’s world class shows, hotels, and casinos.
The Las Vegas Strip
Washington D.C. also has a robust tourism economy. In 2007, Washington hosted 16.2 million visitors, generating an estimated 5.24 billion visitor spending in the city alone. Eight percent of visitors are from abroad. The top countries the international visitors come from are the United Kingdom, Germany, Latin America, Japan, India, South Koriea, Nordic, Australia, Italy and France.
People come to D.C. to see the famous monuments of the nation’s capital and the world renowned museums. The most popular attractions include:
Smithsonian’s: National Museum of Natural History (7 million visitors)
National Air & Space Museum (6 million visitors)
National Museum of American History (3 million visitors)
National Zoological Park (3 million visitors)
Lincoln Memorial (4 million visitors)
WW II Memorial (4 million visitors)
Korean Memorial (7 million visitors)
FDR Memorial (7 million visitors)
Rock Creek Park (7 million visitors)
The Lincoln Memorial
Information gathered from textbook and WashingtonDC.org statistics.
The Great Plains is a region that stretches from the southern tip of Texas through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, all the way to Alberta on the west, and runs through North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma on the East. The region has some of the least variation in vegetation and topography of any region in North America.
D.C. is not located in the Great Plains region, but both D.C. and the Great Plains have rich native American history.
For the Plains Indians, hunting, particularly for buffalo was the primary economic activity and most tribes lived along the streams in semipermanent settlements. With no means of rapid, long-distance overland movement, the Indians could not leave the dependable water supplies of the streams for long periods. This was a substantial problem, for the migration of the great buffalo herds often took this food source far away from settlements for many weeks.
Great Plains Indians--1880
When Spanish explorers departed from the souther Plains in the sixteenth century, they left some of their horses behind. This action dramatically altered the Plains Indians' lifestyle. When the Euro-Americans reached the great Plain in the early nineteenth century, they found what many have called the finest light cavalry in world history. Plains indians were no longer restricted to the region's sparse waterways and freely followed the buffalo migration. Horses enabled the Indians to thrive as never before. A few tribes, like the DAkota (Sioux) in the north, the Apache and the Comanche, dominated large sections of the Great Plains.
The horse completely changed the American Indians' lives.
D.C. Indians
The Piscataway tribe lived along the Piscataway Creek in the Prince George's region of Maryland up to our Washington D.C. Most of the tribe settled comfortably in small villages and camps along the Chesapeake Bay. The men built wigwams and "dug-out canoes," while the women made pottery and baskets. It is said that these "physically dark, very tall, muscular and well-proportioned people" enjoyed their way of life and they only looked to obtain one thing: peace.
Europeans meet the Piscataways
On March 25, 1634 when Lord Cecil Calvert and his Catholic crew landed and began establishing the English Colony of Maryland. Because the native Piscataways had already settled in the area, Calvert's conquest didn't go over as smoothly as he thought it would. Calvert decreed that everyone in the land convert to Catholicism, but the Piscataways practiced their own traditional religion, and could not interpret the English language to remotely understand a foreign faith. Therefore, the Piscataways had no idea what Cecil Calvert was talking about, but when he "composed a grammar, dictionary and catechism in [their] dialect," Algonquian.
Time and time again, Calvert and company came to convert them, but they held fast to their beliefs and did not give in. With time, the Piscataways were asked to leave the prime lands around the Chesapeake. Not only did they receive an eviction notice, in the Northwest, the Susquehannocks, "a warlike tribe," also sought to drive the Piscataways out from their land and "destroy them." In doing so, the Susquehannocks, who were a powerful Native American warlike tribe, also sought to drive the Piscataways out from their land and "destroy them."
Hardly anyone knows what happened to the Piscataways, and they have been all but forgotten in modern society.
The plains of North America's interior are a huge, undulating swath of land. The interior plain's western portion is dry and dominated by grasslands--it is the area that is known for its grand boundless openness, s--known as the Great Plains and Prairies. However, the eastern plain is quite different. The air is humid throughout the growing season (helping produce different vegetation), and it rains much more often. The agricultural core is defined by its small town, rural America.
Washington D.C. is a metropolitan area and not a rural farming area, but D.C. shares common ground with the Agricultural core in that both area's land and cities are laid out in a grid format.
Through the land ordinance of 1785, the Land Ordinance of 1785, land north of the Ohio River and west of Pennsylvania was delimited according to a regular, rectangular township and range survey before it was opened to settlement by the newly independent U.S. States. A series of east-west baselines and north-south meridian lines were drawn, and township squares 6 miles on each side were laid out with respect to these lines. Each township was further divided into 36 sections of 1 square mile.
A modern example of the Township and Range model
Though not farmland, the city of Washington D.C. is divided into similar grid-based areas.
Wikipedia states that, "L'Enfant incorporated a basic grid system, inter-cut with broad diagonal avenues radiating from rectangles to provide open spaces and vistas. His design also envisioned a garden-lined "grand avenue" approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) in length and 400 feet (120 m) wide in the area that is now the National Mall.[3] In 1792, surveyor Andrew Ellicott revised L'Enfant's plan, creating the design that the federal city's development followed.[4][5]"
L'Enfant's original plans for the city of Washington D.C.
He used the United States Capitol as the center from which the four other quadrants (Southwest, Southeast, Northwest, and Northeast) stem from. The quadrants are separated by North Capitol Street, South Capitol Street, and East Capitol street, with a line traveling west from the Capitol through the Jefferson Pier on the National Mall serving as he fourth border line. Constitution Avenue and Independence Avenue line the sides of the area.
North/South streets are designated by numbers and count upwards from east to west in the Northwest and Southwest quadrants of the city, starting at the capitol. In the Northeast and Southeast Quadrants, these streets repeat, but count upwards from West to East, going away from the capitol. East/West streets use a single letter of the alphabet. Street letters count upwards traveling outward from the dividing lines of the quadrants, however, there is no J street.
All information from Washington D.C. Tourism site, the Textbook, and Wikipedia.
This chapter delves into the Southern Coastlands, a region that starts at the mouth of the Rio Grande at Texas/Mexido Border and goes through Florida's peninsula all the way through to coastal North Carolina. This region derives its character from it's location at the continent's southern margin. The Southern Coastland's complex identity is made up of it's humid subtropical environment, its role in generating U.S. trade with the rest of the world, and the coastal region's singular resource pattern.
Although D.C. is not directly in the defined region of the Southern Coastland area, both find common ground in the fact that they both have and continue to experience pretty severe hurricanes.
The textbook states, "More sporadic, more dramatic, and locally more destructive in the Southern Coastlands than elsewhere in North America are hurricanes." Hurricanes are large cyclonic tropical storms that are generated by intense solar heating over large bodies of water. Areas facing the tropical waters of the Caribbean Sea and the southern Atlantic, and the entire Gulf coastal lowland are extremely vulnerable to the hurricanes' fury.
As recently as 2003, Washington D.C. experienced a severly damaging hurricane. On September 19, 2003, Hurricane Isabel hit the Maryland--D.C. area. Gust winds reached as high as 71 mph, and hurricane force winds existed several hundred feet in the air, with wind sensors on tall buildings gathering readings of winds from 71 mph to 85 mph.
Hurricane Isabel makes its way towards Washington D.C.
Although rainfall was minimal (only about 2 inches throughout the district) a Wisconsin Avenue gage recorded an 11.3 foot storm surge and on a pier in the southwest part of D.C. the storm surge was recorded at 10.25 feet, breaking the record of the 1933 Chesapeake Potomac Hurricane. The storm surge caused the flooding of the Washington Navy Guard and the marina. Five people were rescued from their cars in flood waters and many streets were blocked due to the flooding.
The flooding of a parking lot near the marina in Washington D.C.
The forceful winds blew down about 1600 trees in the area, and 23 of the trees fell on top of houses. The winds also caused many power lines to go down and left about 129,000 people without power. The White House sustained no structural damage, but a tree did fall over in the garden.
Throughout the D.C. area, Isabel's storm system created over 30,000 pounds of debris and $125 million dollars in damage.
Information obtained from Hurricane Isabel Wikipedia page.
This chapter focuses on the history and present status of the Southern United States. As in the last post about Appalachia, although Washington D.C. is not technically a part of the South, it is very close to the southern states (Especially Virginia) and as a result, it has had a similar history. The textbook goes into detail about slavery's impact on the South, and in this post I will talk about slavery and the slave trade in D.C.
Prior to the Civil War, Alexandria (less than 10 miles away from D.C.) served as a major market in the American Slave Trade. Many Virginians and Alexandrians were pro-slavery because the trade helped sustain their already depressed economy. The Compromise of 1850 outlawed the slave trade in the district, but the act of slavery itself was not outlawed in Washington D.C. until 1862, when President Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, which entirely ended slavery in the district and freed about 3, 100 slaved people nine months before the national Emancipation Proclamation.
A photo of slaves in Washington D.C.
Jesse J. Holland, Author of "Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering American History in and around Washington D.C." recounts the role of slaves in the Capitol.
"Slaves helped construct the White House from the very beginning. Pierre L'Enfant, the person who designed Washington, D.C., contracted with slave owners to use their slaves to dig the foundation of the White House.
James Hoban, the architect of the White House, actually brought some of his own personal slaves up to Washington, D.C., from South Carolina to work on the White House.
What a lot of people don't know about the National Mall, Capitol, Supreme Court area is that African-American slaves were held in bondage in slave jails on some of these sites.
Here, on the site of the Supreme Court, was a building that was called the Old Brick Capitol. That's the building that Congress used after the Capitol was burned in the war of 1812.
Well, the slave market was so robust in the District of Columbia that slave owners ran out of space to hold their slaves. So, they would rent public jail space to use for storage for African-American slaves. And one of the places they did this was here, at the Old Brick Capitol, on the site of where the Supreme Court is right now."
It seems so ironic that men in chains built much of the monuments and the city that was to represent freedom and equality to all nations. How the white men who wrote our nation's documents couldn't see this hypocrisy is beyond me--just how I can't understand how the "Christian" whites in the South could justify the oppression and horrible treatment of a fellow human being. Both Washington D.C. and the South have a sordid and at times deplorable history in their treatment of African Americans in and outside of slavery.
Chapter 8 is all about Appalachia and the Ozarks. While Washington D.C. is not exactly in the specific area the book covers, D.C. is pretty close to the Appalachian area and mountains. In this post I will talk about the Appalachian Mountains, and more specifically, the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Image from Wikipedia
The Blue Ridge Mountains are on the Eastern side of the Appalachians and face Washington D.C. The mountains extend from Georgia all the way through Pennsylvania. The mountains are called "blue" because of the blue color you see from a distance caused by the isoprene released into the atmosphere. The organic compound causes the characteristic "blue haze" that appears around the mountains. The Blue Ridge Mountains are home to the largest mountains in Eastern North America. The range contains over 125 peaks that exceed 5, 000 feet. The tallest mountain in the Blue Ridge is Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina at 6, 684 feet.
Because the Blue Ridge Mountains are just West of Washington D.C., many D.C. tour companies offer day trips to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Many tourists of the city and Washington residents alike make trips to Shenandoah National Park, just 90 minutes West of the city center. Shenandoah National park contains over 197, 000 acres of land along with over 500 miles of trail, including 101 miles of the famous "Appalachian Trail". The park area is long and narrow and close to 40% of the land area has been designated as protected wilderness.
A peak view of the park at Sunset
Mountain climbers repelling down a cliff in the Park
The highest peak in the national park is Hawksbill Mountain at 4, 051 feet. Additionally, the park contains many waterfalls. The tallest falls, Overall Run, is the largest falls in the park at 93 feet. It is world renowned for it's natural beauty and many outdoor activities it offers.
Chapter Seven goes into detail about the "Bypassed East" an area from Northern New York through Newfoundland. Washington D.C. is not included in this section, so I am focusing on relating the agriculture problems in the Bypassed East to the Farming Bureau in Washington D.C., which handles all things agriculture and tries to help farms and farmers with their land and production.
The textbook writes, "Since the farm family exodus during the nineteenth century, agriculture's regional importance has continued to decline across most of the Bypassed East. Today, less than 15 percent of the land in northern New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) is in farms; 100 years ago, this was close to 50 percent."
Headquartered in Washington D.C., according to their website, the Farm Bureau is an independent, non-governmental, voluntary organization governed by and representing farm and ranch families united for the problems and formulating action to achieve educational improvement, economic opportunity and social advancement and, hereby to promote the national well-being. Farm Bureau is local, county, state, national and international in its scope and influence and is non-partisan, non-sectarian and non-secret in character. Farm Bureau is the voice of agricultural producers at all levels.
The Farm Bureau has sections all across the nation, including the states in the Bypassed East, (New York Vermont and Maine).
Manufacturing is found throughout the more populated regions of North America, but its distribution is not even. Excluding Northern New England, the northeastern United States and southern Ontario together comprise the continent's single most important manufacturing region. According to figure 5.1, Washington D.C. lies just south of the true manufacturing core and is inside the transitional area that stretches to the south eastern border of Virginia.
While D.C. is not in the Manufacturing Core, Washington is does have certain major industries in the city.
1. Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin employs over 22, 000 people in the D.C. area. Lockheed Martin is a U.S. global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed in 1995 by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is the world's largest defense contractor. Due to the companies' large amount of government contracts, the D.C. office is an integral part of the cooperation's operations.
The Lockheed Martin F/A-22 "Raptor"
2. Northrop Grumman
Northrup Grumman employs over 20, 000 people in the Washington D.C. area, the second largest employer in the district. Northrop Grumman is also an American aerospace and defense technology company. As of 2010 it was the fourth-largest defense contractor in the world and the largest builder of naval vessels.
The textbook recounts the story of geographer Jean Gottmann's "monumental study" of what he called a "very special region" located in the northeastern United States. He argued that the massive and complex urban region stemming from southern New Hampshire to Washington D.C., and its northern Virginia suburbs differed from any region that had existed in the world before.
The textbook says that megalopolis formed along the northeastern coast of the United States by the "gradual coalescence of large, independent metropolitan areas such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C."
The book lists Washington D.C. as an example of a megalopolis. In this post I will discuss the characteristics of a megalopolis and analyze why D.C. is considered part of it.
Site Characteristics of Megalopolis
The book defines site characteristics as, "the physical features that make up the immediate environment of that places' location."
An arial view of Washington D.C. and it's rivers, with the main and largest river, the Potomac running through the center of the image.
One of the characteristics of a megalopolis is the presence of water. "Throughout the region, bays and river estuaries penetrate the landmass in a mirror image of the land's penetration of the ocean. This interpenetrated coastline brings more opportunities to take advantage of cheap water transportation than if the coast were straight." This is true of Washington D.C.--as it has 3 rivers that have contributed to it's megalopolis status. The Potomac, the Anacostia River, and Rock Creek River (tributary of the Potomac River) provide access and natural resources to the D.C. area.
This chapter outlines the different peoples who settled in the U.S. and made the vast landscape their own.
In this post I will talk about:
1. The history/settlers in Washington D.C.
2. Demographics/population of Washington D.C. at present
3. Prominent religions in Washington D.C.
History/Settlers in Washington D.C.
Before the Europeans came to America in the 17th century, Washington D.C. was inhabited by an Algonquian-speaking people known as the Nacotchtank. They lived around the Anacosta River when the Europeans arrived in the 1600s, but the native American people had largely left the area by the early 1700s.
Aerial Photo of Washington D.C. 1919
In 1788, James Madison declared his belief in a need for a federal district--a national capital. He believed the capital needed to be separate and distinct from states in order to provide for it's own well-being and safety. The Constitution does not, however, specify a location for a new capital. On July 16, 1790, the Residence Act established the new permanent capital to be located on the Potomac River, and left the exact area to be selected by President George Washington. The Organic Act of 1802 officially organized the District of Columbia and put the federal territory, including Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria under exclusive control of Congress.
Although the slave trade was banned in the city, slavery technically wasn't and by 1860, approximately 80% of the city's African American citizens were free, mainly due to a surge of freed slaves coming Northward at the end of the Civil War. From 1800 to 1900 the population increased by 270,000 people, starting the trend of the continuously growing city.
Demographics/population of Washington D.C. at present
As of 2010, 601, 723 people live in the District of Columbia. As in most American cities, the majority of the population is white, but as mentioned above, Washington had a large black population and still continues to have one this day, with blacks making up 36.3% of the population. Additionally, many foreign immigrants make their homes in D.C., with an estimated 74, 000 living in the city as of 2007. The most common countries the immigrants migrate from are El Salvador, Vietnam, and Ethiopia.
An LGBT Demonstrator in Washington D.C.
Additionally, Washington D.C. has a large and vibrant LGBT community. A report in 2007 found that approximately 33,000 adult residents in D.C. identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. This amounts to about 8.1% of the city's population--a sizable amount compared to most cities in America.
And finally, D.C. host a strongly educated population, as 46% of D.C. residents have at least a four year degree.
Prominent religions in Washington D.C.
Consistent with most of America, the largest religion in D.C. is Christian. In 2000, more than half the D.C. population identified themselves as Christian. Within Christianity are many different denominations, and as also consistent with what the textbook said (that the majority of Americans are Roman Catholic) the same applies in Washington. Close to 28% of D.C. citizens are Roman Catholic, 9.1% are American Baptist, 1.3% are Easter or Oriental Orthodox, and 13% are members of other Christian denominations.
The Pope--The leader of the Roman Catholic Church
Islamic residents make up 10% of the population, disciples of Judaism make up 4.5%, and a very large number (26.8%) do not practice a religion.
"The physical environment, modified by human effort, impinges on our lives regardless of where we live."--Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada.
This chapter focuses on the physical features of the United States including:
1. Topography
2. Mountains
3. Climate
4. Natural/Mineral Resources
In the post below I will delve into Washington D.C.'s physical environment in regards to these specific topics.
Here's a quick video overview of D.C.
Topography and Mountains
Geographers find the topography of Washington D.C. to be very similar to its neighboring Maryland. The highest point in D.C. is 410 feet above sea level at Fort Reno in Tenleytown. Washington D.C. doesn't have any major mountain ranges running through it, but rather have mountains surrounding it. According to weather forcast.com, the closest mountain peak is 56 km away in Maryland, called Sugarloaf Mountain.
Fort Reno in D.C.
Sugarloaf Mountain
in Maryland
The district has three natural rivers: The Potomac River, the Anacostia River, and Rock Creek. The coming together of the Anacostia and the Potomac is called Arsenal Point. Also in the District is the Washinton Channel, which flows into the junction of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. D.C. has three man-made reservoirs: Dalecarlia Reservoir, the McMillan Reservoir, and Georgetown Reservoir.
The Potomac running through D.C.
The lowest point in D.C. is sea level at the shore of the Anacostia and Potomac river shores. Additionally, Washington D.C. also features some great geographical features including Theodore Roosevelt Island--an island turned national park in the Potomac River, Columbia Island--another island in the Potomac and recently renamed Lady Bird Johnson Park, The Three Sisters--three rocky islands in the Potomac west of the Key Bridge, and Hains Point--the peninsula looking but truly island part of land on the southern tip of East Potomac Park.
Surprisingly, it was very hard to find topographic maps of Washington D.C.
Climate
Washington D.C. is located in the Humid Subtropical Zone on the Koppen classification scale. It's climate is very similar to Mid-Atlantic U.S. areas that are removed from a body of water.
Unlike California, Washington D.C.'s weather varies greatly within the seasons. The city typically experiences extreme variations between summer and winter.
A D.C. Climagraph
Summers tend to be very hot and humid, with the heat made even worse in the heart of the city because of its vast area of concrete and steel. Daily temperatures in the summer average 79.2 with 66% humidity. The coalition of humidity and heat brings together frequent summer thunderstorms which can occasionally cause tornados.
A cold winter's day in Washington D.C.
The winters are typically pretty cold, and the city is often subject to heavy snowfalls with up 17 inches a year. Winter temperatures from December to February average 38 degrees. During winter the D.C. is also subject to sudden arctic blasts, frozen rain storms, or blizzards.
July is typically the warmest month and January is typically the coldest. The highest recorded temperature in the city was 106 degrees Fahrenheit on July 20, 1930 and the coldest recorded temperature was -15 degrees Fahrenheit February 11, 1899.
Natural/Mineral Resources
Much of Washington D.C's natural resources and vegetation has been preserved in national parks.
Rock Creek Park
Rock Creek Park--located in Northwestern D.C. It is one of the oldest national parks and is twice as big as New York's Central park, with its acreage totaling 1,755 acres. Not only does the park protect the area's ancient beauty and plants, it also has the only surviving water-powered grist mill on the Potomac, the Pierce Mill, and two Civil War Forts.
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