Backwards Manifest Destiny

Is it possible to have a state in North America that begins on the West Coast and expands across to the Atlantic? Perhaps in a world where Chinese settlers colonize the New World before the Europeans show up?
 
I think one problem is that moving West to East, colonists run into much more formidable initial barriers at the outset.

From East to West you've got the Appalachians and then relatively easy country until you cross the Mississippi and then get into the harsher terrain of the West. West to East, well, outside the Pacific Northwest and Northern California things start to get arid and inhospitable pretty quickly. Then you have to cross the Rockies.
 
OTL of a sort...

I mean the Amerindians traveled from West to East. Filling up the entire continent. But taking this another way. What if the horse survives in the central valley of California but no where else. Then the Californians pull a kind of Ghengis Khan on the entire North American continent? Going West to East.
 
OTL of a sort...

I mean the Amerindians traveled from West to East. Filling up the entire continent. But taking this another way. What if the horse survives in the central valley of California but no where else. Then the Californians pull a kind of Ghengis Khan on the entire North American continent? Going West to East.


Still have the problem of getting gigantic hordes of horsemen and remounts over the Rockies, I'm not saying that it can't be done, it just seems like it would be a very big "Hannibal on the Alps" scenario.
 
It's possible, anything is possible.

Probable? None too likely. The Great Basin is one of the nastiest environments on Earth. Then you have the rockies, and the Plains Tribes who will have already had the horse and some inkling of the invaders at that point.....
 
I think one problem is that moving West to East, colonists run into much more formidable initial barriers at the outset.

From East to West you've got the Appalachians and then relatively easy country until you cross the Mississippi and then get into the harsher terrain of the West. West to East, well, outside the Pacific Northwest and Northern California things start to get arid and inhospitable pretty quickly. Then you have to cross the Rockies.

Absolutely. If the Chinese did colonize the west i doubt they'd go over the rockies. The west isn't too accomodating
 
There's also the fact that the Mississippi provides a simple route from the Midwest to the Atlantic--there's nothing like it from the "Mideast" to the Pacific.
 
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