Pacific Coast, region, western North America, possessing two unifying geologic and geographic properties—the Pacific Ocean, which constitutes a natural western border, and the coastal mountain ranges that form the eastern border of the region. The most commonly accepted definition of the Pacific Coast is largely a political one: it defines the region as comprising the U.S. states of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska and the Canadian province of British Columbia, formerly a part of the old Oregon Country. Hawaii is frequently included statistically in the “Pacific” states of the United States, even though, as a group of Polynesian volcanic and coral islands lying more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) off the U.S. Pacific Coast, it has little in common geologically with the mainland states.
Before Europeans reached North America, the Pacific Coast was inhabited by native peoples belonging to several culture areas and language families, including the California Indians, the Salishan- and Nadene-speaking Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the Eskimo-Aleut groups of the Bering Sea area, and the Indians of the Columbia Plateau. The Spaniards were the first to explore the Pacific Coast following Vasco Núñez de Balboa’s discovery of the Pacific Ocean in 1513. By the time of the American Revolution the Spaniards had already gained familiarity with the California coast, cruised in Alaskan waters, established a base of sorts in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, and used the coastal waters for part of the famed Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. The Spanish hold on California was to remain unchallenged for three centuries.
During the first half of the 19th century, the presence of Americans in California and the United States’ official desire to acquire West Coast ports were among the significant factors bringing on the war with Mexico in 1846–48. By the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, California was included in the Mexican territory ceded to the United States. The discovery of gold in California on Jan. 24, 1848, led the next year to the famous gold rush of the Forty-niners, and in 1850 California was admitted to the Union as the 31st state.
The northern portion of the Pacific Coast, known as the Pacific Northwest, had a somewhat different history from that of California. Initial Russian interest in the Bering Strait area led to the formation in 1799 of the Russian-American Company, which established trading posts in parts of Alaska. In 1867 Russia sold Alaska to the United States, and in 1959 Alaska became the 49th state in the Union.
North of California lay the Oregon Country, a region roughly as large as Alaska and possessing strikingly varied physical features, soil, and climate bound together by the mighty Columbia River. The discovery of Oregon’s rich fur resources led, at the beginning of the 19th century, to an accelerated British and U.S. competition in the establishment of inland trading operations, resulting in overlapping claims to the Oregon Country. After a period of agreed-upon joint occupation, latitude 49° N was established in 1846 as a permanent boundary line to Puget Sound (but not including Vancouver Island). What had begun as a small American overland migration to Oregon in 1841 (by way of the Oregon Trail) gained momentum, and after the boundary settlement the tide of migration grew steadily; in 1848 Oregon was made a U.S. territory. Oregon was admitted to the Union in 1859 and Washington in 1889.
The British area north of the 49th parallel was dominated by the fur trade until the gold strike of 1858. Vancouver Island united with the booming Colony of British Columbia in 1866, and in 1871 the colony became a province of Canada. First connected to the eastern provinces by railroad in 1885, British Columbia developed its timber and agriculture and its Pacific shipping trade. By the second half of the 20th century it had become one of Canada’s wealthiest, most urbanized, and most racially diverse provinces.
Until the admission of Hawaii as a state in 1959, the American Pacific Coast represented the western borderland area of the United States. As such, the people and the press of this region displayed over the years a degree of regional self-consciousness. Isolation from the rest of the country was early corrected by regional efforts to bring about a union of Eastern and Western lines of transportation and communication, an enhancement of maritime trade, and adequate coastal military defenses. Since then the Pacific Coast has been obliged to cope with many problems more peculiar to the West than to the East. For example, large-scale immigration from Mexico and Central America has been a major Pacific Coast concern, as has rapid urban population growth beginning during World War II. Another problem peculiar to this region has been the heavy dependence of West Coast business enterprises upon Eastern capital investment.
The people of the Pacific Coast are generally credited with being individualistic, casual in dress, and innovative in business management.