Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Central Valley, great trough of central Calif., c.450 mi (720 km) long and c.50 mi (80 km) wide, between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers drain much of the...

(Encyclopedia) Cai Guo-Qiang, 1957–, Chinese painter and a sculptor especially known for using gunpowder as a medium and explosions and fireworks as means of artistic expression, b. Quanzhou, Fujian prov., studied...

(Encyclopedia) chaparral chăpərălˈ [key], type of plant community in which shrubs are dominant. It occurs usually in regions having from 10 to 20 in. (25–50 cm) of rainfall annually and with a Mediterranean-ty...

(Encyclopedia) sagebrush, name for several species of Artemisia, deciduous shrubs of the family Asteraceae (aster family), particularly abundant in arid regions of W North America. The common sagebrush (A. tridentat...

(Encyclopedia) Union Pacific Railroad, transportation company chartered (1862) by Congress to build part of the nation's first transcontinental railroad line. Under terms of the Pacific Railroads Act, the Union Paci...

(Encyclopedia) Atlas Mountains, system of ranges and plateaus in NW Africa, extending c.1,500 mi (2,410 km) from SW Morocco, through N Algeria, to N Tunisia; Jebel Toubkal (13,671 ft/4,167 m), in SW Morocco, is the ...

(Encyclopedia) Huston, John hyo͞osˈtən [key], 1906–87, American motion picture director, writer, and actor, b. Nevada, Mo. In many of his films, such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Moby Dick (19...

(Encyclopedia) gambling or gaming, betting of money or valuables on, and often participation in, games of chance (some involving degrees of skill). In England and in the United States, gambling was not a common-law ...

(Encyclopedia) land art or earthworks, art form developed in the late 1960s and early 70s by Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Michael Heizer, and others, in which the artist employs the elements of nature in situ or ...

(Encyclopedia) Donner Party, group of emigrants to California who in the winter of 1846–47 met with one of the most famous tragedies in Western history. The California-bound families were mostly from Illinois and ...