Gulf Coast of the United States Pensacola, St. Petersburg, Tampa, and increasingly, Sarasota. All are the centers of their respective metropolitan areas and contain large ports. (Baton Rouge is relatively far from the Gulf of Mexico; its port is on the Mississippi River, as is the port of New Orleans.) The Gulf Coast is made of many inlets, bays, and lagoons. The coast is also intersected by numerous rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River. Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was, marshland. Ringing the Gulf Coast is the Gulf Coastal Plain which reaches from Southern Texas to the western
Peter the Great Gulf , with the largest bay of the gulf of about divided by the Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula and the Eugénie Archipelago into the major bays of Amur Bay to the west and the Ussuri Bay to the east. The coast is indented by many smaller minor bays, including Possiet Bay, the Zolotoy Rog (the "Golden Horn"), and Diomede Bay in the west, Lazurnaya Bay (the "Shamora", with its sand beaches) in the Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, and Strelok, Vostok and Nakhodka Bay to the east. The functioning of these bays as harbours is severely limited by the freezing from early December to mid-April. The