The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States or colloquially referred to as America, is a political state covering much of the continent of North America, but also incorporating territories in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. As a political unit it traces its origin to the 1776 Declaration of Independence from Great Britain by a region of the eastern coast of North America. By the mid-twentieth century it had become the most powerful state on Earth in terms of military strength and economic, political, scientific and cultural influence.

Most iterations of the Planet of the Apes franchise have been produced with the territory of the United States and, consequently, most geographical and cultural references in those iterations relate to that part of the planet. The first theatrical interpretation of the original source novel replaced the French nationality of the astronaut crew with that of the United States, and further altered the setting from the distant planet Soror to a future Earth. Specifically, the location of the action is revealed to be the eastern area of the former United States, identified through the ruins of the Statue of Liberty - a monument hugely symbolic in US culture. The second movie adds footage of the ruins of nearby New York City, while the third movie is set in and around the western US city of Los Angeles. Subsequent movies and comics set in the aftermath of the downfall of humanity have been generally less specific about their locations relative to the current landscape, though the 1970s TV series identified the ruins of San Francisco and Oakland. The 2001 're-imagined' movie visited an altered future Washington D.C., the capitol of the present-day nation. The trilogy of rebooted Planet of the Apes films released between 2011 and 2017 were set in and around San Francisco.

Some other interpretations based on the PotA concept have been vague on their geographical location, but very few have specifically referred to areas beyond the present-day continental United States; notably, the 1977 short story Flight From Terror showed continued human dominance in the area of present-day Peru, the 1990 comic Ape City detailed the complete extinction of humanity in the area of present-day France, and the early 1990s comic Countdown Zero depicted a tribe of Spanish-speaking apes.

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