The US has nine time zones, including four in the contiguous states and two for Alaska and Hawaii. Some states are split between time zones, and when traveling west, the clock jumps back one hour per time zone.
Officially, there are nine US time zones covering the contiguous US, non-contiguous US, and US territories. The four United States time zones within the contiguous United States are, from east to west, the Eastern Time Zone, the Central Time Zone, the Mountain Time Zone, and the Pacific Time Zone. The Alaska time zone includes the US state of Alaska and the Hawaii-Aleutian time zone includes the US state of Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands.
The Eastern Time Zone is the easternmost of all US time zones and runs from the Atlantic coast west through most of the Ohio Valley. The Central Time Zone runs from the edge of the Eastern Standard Time Zone westward across the Great Plains. The Mountain Standard Time Zone covers the length of the Rocky Mountains and the states containing them, and the Pacific Time Zone includes the coastal Pacific states and the state of Nevada.
US time zones don’t necessarily stop at state lines. For example, South Dakota is split nearly in half between the Central Standard Time Zone and the Mountain Standard Time Zone. The southwest corner of North Dakota is also split between the two. Indiana is split between two US time zones and thus only part of the state has observed DST, but as of 2005, the entire state uses standard time and observes DST.
When traveling west through the US time zones, the clock jumps back one hour in each time zone. For example, if you move from the Eastern Time Zone to the Central Time Zone, the time at the border will change from 2pm to 1pm. However, because some parts of the country, the Hopi nation in Arizona, for example, do not observe daylight saving time, this rule does not always apply.
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