Washington map

Where Washington is

Washington is the northwesternmost state of the contiguous US, on the Canadian border and the Pacific. It measures about 360 miles east to west and about 240 miles north to south. Clockwise from the north: British Columbia along the 49th parallel and through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Haro Strait, Idaho along a meridian to the east, Oregon across the Columbia River and along the 46th parallel to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The state has only two US neighbors. It is the 18th-largest state by area and 13th by population, the most populous in the Pacific Northwest.

Major cities

King, Pierce and Snohomish counties around Seattle hold more than half of the state's people. Spokane is the largest city east of the Cascades and Vancouver is part of the Portland, Oregon, metro area.

Geography

• Highest point — Mount Rainier, 14,411 ft, a glaciated volcano 60 miles southeast of Seattle, the highest peak in the Cascade Range. Mount St. Helens, in the southern Cascades, erupted in 1980; Mount Baker and Glacier Peak are the other active volcanoes.
• Columbia River — enters from Canada, bends around the Big Bend through Grand Coulee Dam, receives the Snake at Pasco and forms the Oregon border to the Pacific. See the Columbia River map.
• Puget Sound — an inland arm of the Pacific reaching 100 miles south to Olympia, with the San Juan Islands to its north and the Olympic Peninsula to its west.
• Olympic Mountains — Mount Olympus, 7,980 ft, with temperate rainforest on the western slopes; Olympic, Mount Rainier and North Cascades are the state's three national parks. See the national parks map.
• East of the Cascades — the dry Columbia Plateau, the Palouse wheat hills near Pullman, the Yakima Valley and the channeled scablands cut by ice-age floods.
• Coast — about 157 miles of open Pacific shore from Cape Flattery to the Columbia mouth; the low point is sea level. See the coastlines map.

Borders

The Columbia River is the Oregon border from the Pacific to a point east of the Snake confluence, where the line becomes the 46th parallel to Idaho. The Idaho border is a meridian at about 117°02'W from the 46th parallel north to Canada. The 49th parallel with British Columbia was fixed by the 1846 Oregon Treaty, and the water boundary through the Strait of Georgia and Haro Strait was settled by arbitration in 1872 after the "Pig War" over the San Juan Islands. Point Roberts, a piece of Washington on a peninsula south of the 49th parallel, can only be reached by land through Canada.

Regions of Washington

Puget Sound (Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Olympia), the Olympic Peninsula and Pacific coast, Southwest Washington (Vancouver, Longview), the Cascades, Central Washington (Yakima, Wenatchee, the Columbia Basin, Tri-Cities) and Eastern Washington or the Inland Northwest (Spokane, the Palouse, Walla Walla). "Cascadia" and "Westside/Eastside" are the usual shorthand for the wet west and dry east of the mountains.

Related maps

• Washington county map — all 39 counties with seats.
• Blank Washington map — outline for printing.
• Printable Washington map.
• Olympia — the capital, at the south end of Puget Sound.
• Seattle — the largest city in the Pacific Northwest.
• Neighbors: Idaho, Oregon.
• West, Pacific division, Pacific Northwest, Pacific Time Zone.
• Geography: Cascade Range, Columbia River, national parks.