Short answers, pulled from the story.
The United States Census Bureau drew a line across the map in 1902 to separate the West from the rest of the country. That boundary placed the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin within thirteen states stretching to the Pacific Ocean.
Mount Whitney rises to fourteen thousand feet above sea level within the Sierra Nevada range. This peak stands as the tallest mountain in the contiguous forty-eight states.
The 2020 Census recorded seventy-eight million five hundred eighty-eight thousand five hundred seventy-two residents across thirteen states. Just under half of those people live in California alone.
The California Gold Rush began in 1849 and transformed the territory almost overnight. California experienced rapid growth in just a few short months before gaining statehood in 1850.
Women cast votes in Wyoming and Utah as early as 1870, fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment ratified nationwide. Most Western states legalized medicinal marijuana except Idaho and Wyoming.