Atlantic City has always been a resort town. Its location in South Jersey, hugging the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, presented itself as prime real estate for developers. The city was incorporated in 1854, the same year in which train service began, linking this remote parcel of land with Philadelphia. Atlantic City became a popular beach destination because of its proximity to Philadelphia.

Cognac, named after the town of Cognac in France, is the most famous variety of brandy, produced in the wine-growing region surrounding the town from which it takes its name. Cognac is made from eaux-de-vie (literally, “waters of life”) produced by doubly distilling the white wines.

El Paso stands on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), across the border from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The image to the right shows Downtown El Paso and Juárez, with the Juárez Mountains in the background. The two cities form a combined International Area with Juarez being the significantly larger of the two. Together they have a combined population of 2 million, with Juárez accounting for 2/3 of the population. Given the proximity of the Las Cruces metropolitan area and its population of 201,603, the El Paso-Las Cruces combined population is 943,665 and with Ciudad Juarez, an international combined population of 2,993,313.

El Paso is home to the University of Texas at El Paso (founded in 1914 as The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy, and later named Texas Western College and Texas Western University) and the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso. Fort Bliss, one of the largest military complexes of the United States Army, lies to the east and northeast of the city, with training areas extending north into New Mexico, up to the White Sands Missile Range and neighboring Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo.

As of the 2008 estimate, the city had a population of 207,510. It is the principal city of the Akron Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Summit and Portage counties and a population of 698,553. Akron is also part of the larger Cleveland-Akron-Elyria Combined Statistical Area, which in 2000 had a population of 2,945,831, and ranked as the country’s 14th largest. Like many former urban manufacturing centers of the U.S. Rust Belt, Akron’s population has declined, falling from a peak of 290,351 in 1960.

Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

As of the 2000 census, Madison had a population of 208,054. Its 2008 estimated population was 231,916, making it the second largest city in Wisconsin, after Milwaukee, and the 81st largest in the United States. The city forms the core of the United States Census Bureau’s Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Dane County and neighboring Iowa and Columbia counties. The Madison MSA had a 2008 estimated population of 561,505, and is one of the fastest-growing in Wisconsin.

Madison is located in the center of Dane County in south-central Wisconsin, 77 miles (124 km) west of Milwaukee and 122 miles (196 km) northwest of Chicago. The city completely surrounds the smaller Town of Madison and the City of Monona, as well as the villages of Maple Bluff and Shorewood Hills. Madison shares borders with its largest suburb, Sun Prairie, and three other communities, Middleton, McFarland, and Fitchburg. The city’s boundaries also approach the villages of Verona, Cottage Grove, DeForest, and Waunakee.

According to the United States Census Bureau, Madison has a total area of 84.7 square miles (219.3 km²), of which, 68.7 square miles (177.9 km²) of it is land and 16.0 square miles (41.5 km²) of it (18.91%) is water.

San Jose is the third-largest city in California and the tenth-largest in the United States. The county seat of Santa Clara County, it is located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region commonly referred to as Silicon Valley. Once a small farming city, San Jose became a magnet for suburban newcomers in new housing developments between the 1960s and 1990s, and is now the most populous city (by city limit) in Northern California and the Western United States of the US north of Los Angeles. Its estimated population by the US Census Bureau as of 2008 is 948,279. The greater metropolitan area contains approximately 7.4 million residents. It is one of the primary cities of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the largest in terms of population, land area, and industrial development.

San Jose was founded on November 29, 1777 as El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, the first town in the Spanish colony of Nueva California, which later became Alta California. The city served as a farming community to support Spanish military installations at San Francisco and Monterey. When California gained statehood in 1850, San Jose served as its first capital. After more than 150 years as an agricultural center, San Jose experienced increased demand for housing from soldiers and other veterans returning from World War II, as well as aggressive expansion during the 1950s and 1960s by annexing more land area. By the 1990s, San Jose’s location within the booming local technology industry earned the city the nickname Capital of Silicon Valley.