Southwestern United States

The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest, Desert Southwest, or simply the Southwest, is the informal name for a region of the western United States. Definitions of the region's boundaries vary a great deal and have never been standardized, though many boundaries have been proposed. For example, one definition includes the stretch from the Mojave Desert in California to Carlsbad, New Mexico , and from the Mexico–United States border to the southern areas of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada . The largest metropolitan areas are centered around Phoenix , Las Vegas , Tucson , Albuquerque , and El Paso . Those five metropolitan areas have an estimated total population of more than 9.6 million as of 2017, with nearly 60 percent of them living in the two Arizona cities—Phoenix and Tucson.

Most of the area was part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the Spanish Empire before becoming part of Mexico. European settlement was almost non-existent outside New Mexico in 1848, when it became part of the United States through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, while southern areas of Arizona and southwestern New Mexico were added in the later Gadsden Purchase.

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