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The Southwest
The desert borderlands of red rock and shared cultures
The Southwest is the arid borderland region of the lower-left United States, centered on Arizona and New Mexico and reaching into West Texas, southern Nevada, southern California, and southern Colorado and Utah. It is a land of deserts, red-rock canyons, mesas, and saguaro - and of a cultural blend found nowhere else, layering Native American nations, three centuries of Spanish and Mexican heritage, and Anglo-American settlement.
The Grand Canyon, the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, and the Rio Grande all lie within it, and its dramatic light and landscape have long drawn artists to places like Santa Fe and Sedona. Once one of the emptiest parts of the country, it is now among the fastest-growing, with Phoenix, Las Vegas, Tucson, and Albuquerque expanding rapidly against the hard limits of desert water.