Baker Island, formerly known as New Nantucket, is an uninhabited atoll just north of the Equator in the central Pacific Ocean about 3,090 km (1,920 mi) southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbor is Howland Island, 42 mi (68 km) to the north-northwest; both have been claimed as territories of the United States since 1857, though the United Kingdom considered them part of the British Empire between 1897 and 1936.
Howland Island is an uninhabited coral island located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean, about 1,700 nautical miles (3,100 km) southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia and is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States. Together with Baker Island it forms part of the Phoenix Islands. For statistical purposes, Howland is grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The island has an elongated cucumber-shape on a north–south axis, 1.40 by 0.55 miles, and covers 1 square mile.
Kingman Reef is a largely submerged, uninhabited, triangle-shaped reef, geologically an atoll, 9.0 nmi (20 km) east-west and 4.5 nmi (8 km) north-south, in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa. It has an area of 3 hectares and is one of the unincorporated territories of the United States in Oceania. The reef is administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge.
Navassa Island is a small uninhabited island in the Caribbean Sea. Located northeast of Jamaica, south of Cuba, and 40 nautical miles west of Jérémie on the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti, it is subject to an ongoing territorial dispute between Haiti and the United States, which administers the island through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The United States Minor Outlying Islands is a statistical designation defined by the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 3166-1 code. The entry code is ISO 3166-2:UM. The minor outlying islands and groups of islands consist of eight United States insular areas in the Pacific Ocean and one in the Caribbean Sea.
In the United States, a territory is any extent of region under the sovereign jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States, including all waters. The United States asserts sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving, and managing its territory. This extent of territory is all the area belonging to, and under the dominion of, the United States federal government for administrative and other purposes. The United States total territory includes a subset of political divisions.
In the law of the United States, an insular area is a U.S.-associated jurisdiction that is not part of the 50 states or the District of Columbia. This includes fourteen U.S. territories administered under U.S. sovereignty, as well as three sovereign states each with a Compact of Free Association with the United States. The term also may be used to refer to the previous status of the Philippine Islands and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands when it existed.
Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions overseen by the federal government of the United States. The various American territories differ from the U.S. states and Indian reservations as they are not sovereign entities. In contrast, each state has a sovereignty separate from that of the federal government and each federally recognized Native American tribe possesses limited tribal sovereignty as a "dependent sovereign nation." Territories are classified by incorporation and whether they have an "organized" government through an organic act passed by the Congress. American territories are under American sovereignty and, consequently, may be treated as part of the United States proper in some ways and not others. Unincorporated territories in particular are not considered to be integral parts of the United States, and the Constitution of the United States applies only partially in those territories.
The Guano Islands Act is a United States federal law passed by the Congress that enables citizens of the United States to take possession in the name of the United States of unclaimed islands containing guano deposits. The islands can be located anywhere, so long as they are not occupied by citizens of another country and not within the jurisdiction of another government. It also empowers the president to use the military to protect such interests and establishes the criminal jurisdiction of the United States in these territories.
Serranilla Bank is a partially submerged reef, with small uninhabited islets, in the western Caribbean Sea. It is situated about 350 kilometres (220 mi) northeast of Punta Gorda, Nicaragua, and roughly 280 kilometres (170 mi) southwest of Jamaica. The closest neighbouring land feature is Bajo Nuevo Bank, located 110 kilometres (68 mi) to the east.
Fakaofo, formerly known as Bowditch Island, is a South Pacific Ocean atoll located in the Tokelau Group. The actual land area is only about 3 km2, consisting of islets on a coral reef surrounding a central lagoon of some 45 km2. According to the 2006 census 483 people officially live on Fakaofo. Of those present 70% belong to the Congregational Church and 22% to the Catholic Church.
The Canton and Enderbury Islands consist of the coral atolls of Canton Island and Enderbury in the northeastern part of the Phoenix Islands, about 1,850 miles (3,000 km) south of Hawaii in the central Pacific Ocean.
Charles Edward Magoon was an American lawyer, judge, diplomat, and administrator who is best remembered as a governor of the Panama Canal Zone; he also served as Minister to Panama at the same time. His successes led to his appointment as an occupation governor of Cuba in 1906. He was the subject of several scandals during his career. As a legal advisor working for the United States Department of War, he drafted recommendations and reports that were used by Congress and the executive branch in governing the United States' new territories following the Spanish–American War. These reports were collected as a published book in 1902, then considered the seminal work on the subject. During his time as a governor, Magoon worked to put these recommendations into practice. In summary: Magoon was hugely successful in Panama but criticized for his tenure in Cuba.
The Alto Velo Claim, also referred to as the Alta Vela Affair, was a territorial claim against the Dominican government by American adventurers ejected from Alto Velo Island by Dominican officials in October 1860. In all, three companies claimed U.S. protection of their right to mine guano from the island under the Guano Islands Act of 1856, but the U.S. Department of State never recognized U.S. interests in the island.
While the United States has relatively complicated maritime boundaries, it shares international land borders with only two nations:
Lulu Town, also known as Lulu Ville, is a now uninhabited, former settlement on Navassa Island, claimed by both the United States and neighbouring Haiti, in the Windward Passage.
Alto Velo Island is a small uninhabited island south of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea. Its maximum height is about 152 metres (499 ft) above sea level. It lies on an underwater mountain range which continues to Beata Island and the southwestern coast of the Dominican Republic. It has an area of 1.02 km2 (0.39 sq mi) and is 1.4 km (0.87 mi) long, being oval in shape.
Sarah Ann Island is a vanished island, previously located at 4°0′N154°22′W. It was supposedly discovered in 1858 by Captain William W. Taylor and reported to the U.S. State Department on February 12, 1859, along with 41 other atolls and islands he claimed under the Guano Islands Act. Taylor assigned his interest in Sarah Ann Island and the other islands to the U.S. Guano Company of New York, which bonded them with the U.S. Treasury Department in February 1860; however, a 1933 review of Guano Islands Act claims found no evidence that the island was ever mined. Furthermore, the report noted that no island could be found at the reported coordinates of 4° 0' N, 154° 22' W.
Jones v. United States 137 U.S. 202 (1890) is a United States Supreme Court case in which the court upheld the constitutionality of the Guano Islands Act, which states that any island that fell under the act was under the jurisdiction of any existing statues or laws pertaining to high seas. The case originated from claims the United States government could not prosecute Henry Jones for committing murder on Navassa Island during a riot.
