How many US states contain desert land?

Seven states hold the four North American deserts recognized by biologists: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Texas and Oregon. Arizona is the only state that contains parts of three of them (Mojave, Sonoran and Chihuahuan), while Oregon's high desert is the northern edge of the Great Basin.

What are the four major deserts of the United States?

The Great Basin (Nevada, western Utah, southeastern Oregon, southern Idaho), the Mojave (southeastern California, southern Nevada, northwestern Arizona, southwestern Utah), the Sonoran (southern Arizona, southeastern California), and the Chihuahuan (southern New Mexico, far West Texas, southeastern Arizona). The Great Basin is the largest at about 190,000 square miles.

Which US state has the most desert?

Nevada. About 85 percent of Nevada sits inside the Great Basin desert, which is why the state motto tree is the single-leaf pinon and the state flower is sagebrush. Arizona is second by land share, with roughly one-third of the state inside the Sonoran desert.

Where is the hottest desert in the United States?

Death Valley National Park in the Mojave Desert of eastern California recorded 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913, the highest reliably measured air temperature on Earth. The park's Badwater Basin is also the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level.

Are there deserts outside the Southwest?

Yes. The Alvord Desert in southeastern Oregon and the Owyhee Desert stretching into southern Idaho are both Great Basin outliers. Washington's Columbia Basin is a shrub-steppe cold desert that sits in the rain shadow of the Cascades and receives less than 10 inches of rain per year, though it is usually classified as semi-arid rather than true desert.

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Mojave to Sonoran, the 7 US desert states mapped

The four North American deserts (Great Basin, Mojave, Sonoran, Chihuahuan) cross seven states. Here is which desert lives where, plus the odd cold-desert pockets outside the Southwest.

North America has four true deserts, and all four are anchored in the United States. Biologists draw the boundaries by plant life rather than by rainfall alone, so a saguaro tells you the Sonoran, a Joshua tree marks the Mojave, sagebrush blankets the Great Basin, and creosote plus lechuguilla flag the Chihuahuan. Seven states sit inside at least one of these zones: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Texas and Oregon. This guide walks through each desert, which state it dominates, and the outlier pockets people forget.

The 4 North American deserts and their host states

The desert borders overlap, and no single state owns just one. Arizona is the only state that touches three (Mojave, Sonoran and Chihuahuan). The table below matches each desert to its primary and secondary states, with the approximate footprint used by the US Geological Survey and the National Park Service.

Desert	Primary state	Also reaches	Size (approx.)
Great Basin	Nevada	Utah, Oregon, Idaho, California	190,000 sq mi
Chihuahuan	New Mexico	Texas, Arizona (plus Mexico)	140,000 sq mi in US
Sonoran	Arizona	California (plus Mexico)	100,000 sq mi in US
Mojave	California	Nevada, Arizona, Utah	47,000 sq mi

Great Basin: the cold desert

The Great Basin is the largest US desert and the odd one out. It sits between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range, gets its rain shadowed away by both, and drops to snow in winter. Sagebrush is the signature plant, which is why Nevada picked it as the state flower. Nevada is roughly 85 percent Great Basin. Western Utah holds the Bonneville Salt Flats and the Great Salt Lake Desert. Southeastern Oregon holds the Alvord Desert, a dry lakebed east of Steens Mountain. Southern Idaho contributes the Owyhee high desert and the Snake River Plain.

Mojave: Joshua trees and Death Valley

The Mojave is the smallest of the four but the most famous. Death Valley National Park sits in its center and recorded 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913, still the highest reliably measured air temperature on Earth. Badwater Basin, also in the park, is 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in North America. The Joshua tree grows only here. The Mojave covers southeastern California, southern Nevada (including Las Vegas), the northwestern corner of Arizona around Kingman, and a slice of southwestern Utah near St. George.

Sonoran: saguaro country

The Sonoran is the wettest of the US deserts, with two rainy seasons and lush cactus forests. The saguaro cactus, up to 40 feet tall, grows nowhere else on Earth and is the state flower of Arizona. This desert wraps around Tucson and Phoenix, then continues south into the Mexican state of Sonora. In the United States it covers southern Arizona and the low southeastern corner of California, including the Salton Sea, the Coachella Valley, and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (600,000 acres, the largest state park in the contiguous US).

Chihuahuan: high, dry and eastern

The Chihuahuan is the largest desert in North America counting the Mexican portion, but only a slice sits inside the US. It occupies southern New Mexico around Las Cruces and White Sands, the far west Texas Trans-Pecos region including Big Bend National Park, and the southeastern tip of Arizona around the Chiricahua Mountains. Elevations run high (mostly 3,500 to 5,000 feet) which keeps temperatures more moderate than the Sonoran. Creosote bush, agave and yucca dominate.

The 7 desert states at a glance

Every state in the list below contains at least one of the four deserts. Population and capital data reflect the 2020 census; nicknames and state symbols come from official state code.

State	Capital	Nickname	Deserts
Arizona	Phoenix	Grand Canyon State	Sonoran, Mojave, Chihuahuan
California	Sacramento	Golden State	Mojave, Sonoran (Colorado subregion)
Nevada	Carson City	Silver State	Great Basin, Mojave
New Mexico	Santa Fe	Land of Enchantment	Chihuahuan
Utah	Salt Lake City	Beehive State	Great Basin, Mojave (SW corner)
Texas	Austin	Lone Star State	Chihuahuan (Trans-Pecos)
Oregon	Salem	Beaver State	Great Basin (SE quarter)

State symbols that give the desert away

Some official state symbols read like a field guide to arid country:

Arizona: state flower is the saguaro cactus blossom, state bird is the cactus wren, state tree is the palo verde. All three are Sonoran endemics.
Nevada: state flower is sagebrush, state tree is the single-leaf pinon. Both are Great Basin cornerstones.
New Mexico: state bird is the greater roadrunner (a Chihuahuan resident), state flower is the yucca. State motto is Crescit eundo, Latin for "It grows as it goes."
California: state flower is the California poppy, which carpets the western Mojave every superbloom year.
Utah: state flower is the sego lily, a bulb that Mormon settlers ate during the 1848 crop failure.

Desert outliers people forget

The core Southwest gets most of the attention, but there are true or near-true desert pockets in surprising places.

Alvord Desert, Oregon: a dried lakebed east of Steens Mountain that gets about 7 inches of rain a year. Land-speed racers use it as an unofficial runway.
Owyhee Desert, Idaho and Oregon: a Great Basin extension covering roughly 7 million acres of sagebrush steppe across the two states.
Columbia Basin, Washington: a cold shrub-steppe in the rain shadow of the Cascades. Not officially classed as one of the four true deserts, but Yakima and Kennewick get under 8 inches of rain a year.
Red Desert, Wyoming: a high, cold basin in the state's south-central belt. Botanists debate whether it counts as true desert, but the Great Divide Basin sits entirely within it.
Colorado Plateau: not a desert biome itself, but Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado share this high-elevation dryland where the Four Corners meet. Canyonlands, Arches, and the Grand Canyon all sit inside it.

How desert geography shaped statehood

The dry Southwest was the last part of the lower 48 to become states, and the reason was water. New Mexico and Arizona both entered the Union in 1912, the 47th and 48th states. Nevada came in during the Civil War in 1864, admitted early because the Comstock Lode silver was needed for the Union treasury. Utah waited until 1896 because of the fight over polygamy in the Latter-day Saints Church. California jumped the line in 1850 thanks to the Gold Rush. Texas came in as an independent republic in 1845. Oregon, the only non-Mexican-Cession desert state, was admitted in 1859 from the Oregon Territory.

Four of these seven states (Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah) were carved from land Mexico ceded in 1848 after the Mexican-American War. Four of them (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah) meet at the only place in the country where four state lines converge, the Four Corners Monument. The high desert climate is not incidental to any of this. It is why the pueblos were built into cliffs, why the Mormon irrigation canals mattered, why Los Angeles fought San Francisco for the Owens Valley water rights, and why Phoenix now runs on Colorado River allocations that are being cut year over year.

Learn the desert states by playing

Statedoku uses constraints like "Sonoran Desert", "Four Corners", "Mexican Cession", "under 5 electoral votes". Play the daily puzzle and the desert map draws itself in your head.

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