Geography of the United States York City, and includes the Florida peninsula. Areas further inland feature rolling hills, mountains, and a diverse collection of temperate and subtropical moist and wet forests. The Appalachian Mountains form a line of low mountains separating the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Basin. The five Great Lakes are located in the north-central portion of the country, four of them forming part of the border with Canada, only Lake Michigan situated entirely within United States. The southeast United States, generally stretching from the Ohio River on south, includes a variety of warm temperate and subtropical moist and
Colonial history of the United States in 1783, the region south of the Great Lakes formally became part of the United States. The Illinois country by 1752 had a French population of 2,500; it was located to the west of the "Ohio Country" and was concentrated around Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Sainte Genevieve. According to one scholar, "The Illinois Habitant was a gay soul; he seemed shockingly carefree to later, self-righteous Puritans from the American colonies." French claims to French Louisiana stretched thousands of miles from modern Louisiana north to the largely unexplored Midwest, and west to the Rocky Mountains. It was generally divided into Upper and