The total land area of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands, (CNMI), is 176.5 square miles. This is an area about equal in
size to that of Barbados or the Seychelles. The CNMI 14 island chain
extends about 400 nautical miles (460 statute miles) from the island of
Rota in the south to the most northern island of Farallon De Pajaros.
There are no cities in the Northern Marianas as normally considered nor
is the term "town" usually applied to the island's congested areas.
Rather the urbanized areas are usually referred to as villages or
communities and none are incorporated with fixed, surveyed boundaries.
Each of the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Rota are separate municipalities.
Saipan is about 12.5 miles long and 5.5 miles wide and has a total
land area of 46.5 square miles which is about the size of San
Francisco. Saipan is slightly larger than Hong Kong but smaller than the
District of Columbia. Saipan is four and one half times smaller than
Guam, 120 miles south, and in 1990 had about one third the population of
that U.S.territory. Mt. Tapotchau on Saipan at 1,554 feet is the
highest point. The measurement from the floor of the Marianas Trench to
the crest of Mount Tapotchau is 37,752 feet or 7.15 statute miles,
(from sea level Mount Everest measures 29,028 feet ). Saipan's 54 mile
coast line is irregular except on the western side where there is a
fringing reef. A large part of the island is public land. Saipan has
14 miles of beach. Of the 8 communities on Saipan, Garapan and Chalan
Kanoa may be considered the principal urbanized areas.
Rota is approximately 10.5 miles long and 3 miles wide with a
38.3 mile coastline encompassing an area of 32.8 square miles. The
highest elevation is Mt. Manira at 1,625 feet.The principal community is
Songsong.
Tinian is approximately 10.5 miles long by 5 miles at its widest
point and has a total area of 39.2 square miles and a coastline 38 miles
in length. The highest point, Puntan Carolinas, is 583 feet above sea
level. The principal community is San Jose. A large portion of Tinian
has been leased to the U.S. military.
The Northern Islands, consists of 10
islands with a combined land area of 55.3 square miles. With the
exception of Pagan, site of an active volcano, the remaining smaller
northern islands are either uninhabited or have extremely small
populations. The island of Aguijan, south of Tinian, is uninhabited and
has an area of 2.7 square miles.
The Mariana Archipelago, situated in the western Pacific, is the
eastern boundary of the Philippine Sea.
The Commonwealth is about as far away from the U. S. west coast as,
for example, Washington, D. C. is from Cairo, Egypt. Since the
International Date Line is between Hawaii and the Mariana Islands, as a
consequence of this geography, at no time do normal business hours on
the United States east coast coincide with those of the Commonwealth.
Indeed, telephone communication with the U.S. west coast and Hawaii,
when conducted during normal business hours and work days, can only take
place 4 days a week or between Tuesday and Friday (from the CNMI ),
Monday to Thursday (from the U. S.).
While the islands are a western oriented culture, they are situated
in the Eastern Hemisphere and are about as far west of the United States
as one can get and still remain under the flag. They are as distant as
Tokyo or Melbourne and about the same distance north of the equator as
Manila. The Mariana Islands are 9 time zones west of Washington D.C.; 6
zones west of San Francisco and 4 zones west of Honolulu. To provide
some appreciation of the size of the Pacific, the flying time between
Saipan and Honolulu is more than seven hours. This portion of the
Pacific alone is greater in distance than that of the Atlantic Ocean
between the United States east coast and Europe.
