Continental United States Totally Explained

The continental United States is a term referring to the United States situated on the North American continent. Depending on usage, it can mean either:* the 48 contiguous states plus the District of Columbia; or

the 48 contiguous states plus the District of Columbia and Alaska.

The first definition is more traditional, back to before Alaskan statehood, and is the more commonly used definition. The second definition is the technically correct definition because Alaska is also in North America, northwest of Canada. In both senses, Hawaii – an archipelago southwest of North America in the Pacific Ocean – is excluded.

Similar terms

To avoid confusion, people often use the term continental United States when including Alaska, and one of the following when excluding Alaska, for example, referring to only those 48 states situated in central North America:

contiguous United States

conterminous United States

lower 48 states (see below)

CONUS (a military abbreviation) The term lower 48 (states) describes the states on the North American mainland from the perspective of Alaska. If interpreted from a global perspective (which would thus include Hawaii), the term could refer to all states except Alaska and Minnesota, the two northernmost states. This isn't generally the case, however, and "the lower 48" is normally understood to mean the whole contiguous United States, and not Alaska or Hawaii. These 48 states have together an area of 7.902.634 km².
The District of Columbia, while not a state, is generally understood to form part of the continental United States or contiguous United States, as it's legally incorporated into the territory of the country.

Use in Alaska and Hawaii

Some places, because of their own location relative to the contiguous United States, have their own unique labels for it:

In Hawaii and overseas American territories, the term "the Mainland" or "U.S. Mainland" is used to refer to the continental United States (either including or excluding Alaska).

In Alaska, the term "Lower 48" is sometimes used to refer to the contiguous states. However, more often, long-time residents often simply call this area "Outside", as in "My brother went Outside to have heart surgery".(External Link

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In Alaska, another term often used in reference to the contiguous 48 States is the word "Stateside" which is often used by military personnel and which has been adopted by the larger populace. For most branches of military service, Alaska duty stations were considered Overseas posts, hence the reference. The term "continental United States" is almost never used when referring to just the contiguous states, perhaps because some Alaskans consider it a slight to exclude them from the continent.

Use in federal law

As the language of the Alaska Omnibus Act of 1959 makes apparent, the term was in use in U.S. federal law prior to then. It presumably dates from after the acquisition of Alaska in 1867, and probably from after the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii brought the United States its first off-continent possessions, both in 1898. Whatever else these terms may be, "continental United States" is a term defined in various federal laws, in different ways in different time periods; it's also defined in different ways at the same time, depending on whether or not the context was the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, during at least a period that began with Alaska statehood.

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