US Map / US Time Zones

US Time Zones Map

The United States spans six time zones. Here's the map, the states in each zone, and the states that split across two.

The six US time zones

The six zones from east to west, with UTC offsets as standard time / daylight saving time. The District of Columbia is Eastern and is not counted in the state totals. Alaska appears only as a split state because its far western Aleutians keep Hawaii–Aleutian time.
Zone	UTC offset	States wholly in	States partly in
Eastern (ET)	−5 / −4	17	5
Central (CT)	−6 / −5	10	10
Mountain (MT)	−7 / −6	6	8
Pacific (PT)	−8 / −7	2	3
Alaska (AKT)	−9 / −8	—	1
Hawaii–Aleutian (HAT)	−10 (no DST in Hawaii)	1	1

Which time zone is my state in?

Thirty-six states keep one clock from border to border; the other fourteen are cut by a zone line somewhere. The table below gives every state and the zone it uses, and where a state is split, the zone most of its population lives in comes first.

Which time zone every state uses. Where two are listed the state is split; the first is the zone most of its population lives in.
State	Time zone	Whole or split
Alabama	Central	whole state
Alaska	Alaska, Hawaii–Aleutian	split — mostly Alaska
Arizona	Mountain	whole state
Arkansas	Central	whole state
California	Pacific	whole state
Colorado	Mountain	whole state
Connecticut	Eastern	whole state
Delaware	Eastern	whole state
Florida	Eastern, Central	split — mostly Eastern
Georgia	Eastern	whole state
Hawaii	Hawaii–Aleutian	whole state
Idaho	Mountain, Pacific	split — mostly Mountain
Illinois	Central	whole state
Indiana	Eastern, Central	split — mostly Eastern
Iowa	Central	whole state
Kansas	Central, Mountain	split — mostly Central
Kentucky	Eastern, Central	split — mostly Eastern
Louisiana	Central	whole state
Maine	Eastern	whole state
Maryland	Eastern	whole state
Massachusetts	Eastern	whole state
Michigan	Eastern, Central	split — mostly Eastern
Minnesota	Central	whole state
Mississippi	Central	whole state
Missouri	Central	whole state
Montana	Mountain	whole state
Nebraska	Central, Mountain	split — mostly Central
Nevada	Pacific, Mountain	split — mostly Pacific
New Hampshire	Eastern	whole state
New Jersey	Eastern	whole state
New Mexico	Mountain	whole state
New York	Eastern	whole state
North Carolina	Eastern	whole state
North Dakota	Central, Mountain	split — mostly Central
Ohio	Eastern	whole state
Oklahoma	Central	whole state
Oregon	Pacific, Mountain	split — mostly Pacific
Pennsylvania	Eastern	whole state
Rhode Island	Eastern	whole state
South Carolina	Eastern	whole state
South Dakota	Central, Mountain	split — mostly Central
Tennessee	Eastern, Central	split — mostly Eastern
Texas	Central, Mountain	split — mostly Central
Utah	Mountain	whole state
Vermont	Eastern	whole state
Virginia	Eastern	whole state
Washington	Pacific	whole state
West Virginia	Eastern	whole state
Wisconsin	Central	whole state
Wyoming	Mountain	whole state

States split between two zones

Thirteen of the contiguous states are divided by a time zone boundary, and Alaska makes a fourteenth. Florida keeps its western panhandle on Central and the peninsula on Eastern; Indiana puts a dozen counties near Chicago and Evansville on Central and the rest on Eastern; Tennessee and Kentucky both split east–west between the same two zones; Texas gives only El Paso and Hudspeth counties to Mountain. Michigan, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho and Oregon are the rest of the thirteen. Nevada is the narrowest split in the country — one town, West Wendover, sits on the Utah line and runs on Mountain time while the entire rest of the state is Pacific. Alaska is the fourteenth: everything but the far western Aleutians is on Alaska Time, and those islands keep Hawaii–Aleutian. The map above colors each state by its primary zone only, so for a split state check its own page from the states index.

Daylight saving time

Most of the country moves clocks forward one hour from March to November. Two places don't: Hawaii, and Arizona outside the Navajo Nation. During DST, Arizona matches Pacific Daylight Time even though it sits in the Mountain zone — a frequent source of confusion for anyone booking meetings with Phoenix.

Reading the zone boundaries

Time zone lines rarely follow straight meridians. They bend around state borders, metro areas, and even individual counties so that communities that trade together keep the same clock. That's why the Central–Mountain boundary zigzags through the Great Plains rather than cutting cleanly down the map.

Who decides where the lines run

Not the states. Zone boundaries are federal, set by the Department of Transportation under the Standard Time Act, and a county that wants to switch has to petition for a rulemaking and show that its economic life points the other way. Counties do it regularly and the map keeps moving: the western half of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas belongs to Mountain Time because ranching country there looks to Denver rather than Omaha, and several Indiana counties have changed zones more than once as commuting patterns shifted toward Chicago or Louisville.

The zones in practice

Roughly half the country's population lives in the Eastern zone, which is why national broadcasts and market hours are quoted in it, and it also holds the most states — 17 wholly inside it against Central's 10. The Central zone's distinction is the opposite one: ten of the fourteen split states touch it, more than any other zone, because it is the only zone with a neighbor on each side across the whole width of the country. Mountain is the thinnest by population, and it is the only one where a large state — Arizona — keeps standard time year-round, so it effectively joins Pacific for half the year. Beyond the mainland, Alaska puts almost an entire state on one clock despite spanning as much longitude as the lower 48, and Hawaii–Aleutian observes no daylight saving in Hawaii, where day length barely changes across the year.