Historically, the Northwest Coast people inhabited a narrow belt of North American Pacific coastland and offshore islands from the southern border of Alaska to northwestern California. Their world stretched from Yakutat Bay, in the northeastern Gulf of Alaska, south to Cape Mendocino, in present-day California. Its eastern limits were the crest of the Coast Ranges from the north down to Puget Sound, the Cascades south to the Columbia River, and the coastal hills of what are now Oregon and northwestern California.