Kingman Reef

Kingman Reef is a U.S. territory you could nearly miss while standing on it. The triangular reef, about 35 miles northwest of Palmyra Atoll, encloses a deep lagoon, but its dry land amounts to a few narrow strips of coral rubble and giant clam shells that rise only a few feet above high tide, about 0.01 square kilometer in all. It is the northernmost of the Line Islands and is uninhabited.

The United States annexed the reef in 1922, and in 1937 and 1938 Pan American Airways used its lagoon as a stopover for flying boats on the route south toward American Samoa and New Zealand. Today it is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a national wildlife refuge, protecting one of the least-disturbed coral reef ecosystems in the Pacific, with large numbers of sharks and other predatory fish.

• Palmyra Atoll
  The only incorporated territory of the United States near
• American Samoa
  The southernmost U.S. territory, in the South Pacific related