Southwestern United States - Regional Geography

Regional Geography

Geographer Uriah D. W. Meinig defines the core of the Southwest as the portion of New Mexico west of the Llano Estacado and the portion of Arizona east of the Mohave-Sonoran Desert and south of the "canyonlands", and also including the El Paso district of western Texas and the southernmost part of Colorado. He identifies four distinct subregions with this core. He calls the first subregion "Northern New Mexico", and describes it as focused on Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It extends from the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado to south of Socorro and including the Manzano Mountains, with an east-west breadth in the north stretching from the upper Canadian River to the upper San Juan River. The area around Albuquerque is sometimes called Central New Mexico.

"Central Arizona" is a vast metropolitan area spread across one contiguous sprawling oasis, essentially equivalent to the Phoenix metropolitan area. The city of Phoenix is the largest urban center, and located in the approximate center of the area which includes Tempe, Mesa, and many others.

Meinig calls the third subregion "El Paso, Tucson, and the Southern Borderlands". While El Paso and Tucson are distinctly different cities they share a similar and somewhat overlapping hinterland between them. Tucson occupies a large oasis at the western end of the El Paso-Tucson corridor. The region between the two cities is a major transportation trunk with settlements servicing both highway and railway needs. There are also large mining operations, ranches, and agricultural oases. Both El Paso and Tucson have large military installations nearby; Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range north of El Paso in New Mexico, and, near Tucson, the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Albuquerque has Sandia National Laboratories and Kirtland Air Force Base. About 70 miles (110 km) to the southeast are the research facilities at Fort Huachuca. These military installations form a kind of hinterland around the El Paso-Tucson region, and are served by scientific and residential communities such as Sierra Vista, Las Cruces, and Alamogordo. El Paso's influence extends north into the Mesilla Valley, and southeast along the Rio Grande into the Trans-Pecos region of Texas.

The fourth subregion Meinig calls the "Northern Corridor and Navaholands". A major highway and railway trunk connects Albuquerque and Flagstaff. Just north of the transportation trunk are large blocks of Native American land.

Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas dominate the western most metropolitan areas in the southwest region, while, Albuquerque, Denver, Colorado Springs, and El Paso dominate the eastern most metropolitan areas of the southwest, not including Northern, Central, and Eastern Texas, and Oklahoma, because they are not always considered part of the southwest. Reno and Salt Lake City also dominate the northernmost metropolitan areas of the southwest. Thus the basic spatial structure of the Southwest can be seen as focused on the largest metropolitan areas in each state such as Phoenix, Albuquerque, Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and El Paso. Also, the Four Corners of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico is often considered to be the center, or heart, of the American Southwest.