US states with mountains: Rockies, Appalachians, Sierra

The United States has four dominant mountain systems: the Appalachians running from Alabama to Maine, the Rocky Mountains spanning Montana to New Mexico, the Sierra Nevada tucked mostly inside California, and the Cascade Range crossing Washington, Oregon, and northern California. Add Alaska's Alaska Range and Brooks Range and you have roughly 22 states where a major named range shapes the landscape. This guide lists them by system, with each state's high point.

The Rocky Mountain states

The Rockies stretch about 3,000 miles from British Columbia south to New Mexico. Inside the United States, six states carry a major section of the range (Nevada and Arizona, listed below for their high points, belong to other ranges). Colorado is the tallest of them and the highest state overall, with a mean elevation near 6,800 feet and 58 peaks above 14,000 feet. Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico round out the highest-elevation quartet. The full list of Rocky Mountain states, with each state's highest point:

State	Highest peak	Elevation
Colorado	Mount Elbert	14,440 ft
Wyoming	Gannett Peak	13,809 ft
Utah	Kings Peak	13,534 ft
New Mexico	Wheeler Peak	13,167 ft
Montana	Granite Peak	12,807 ft
Idaho	Borah Peak	12,668 ft
Nevada	Boundary Peak	13,147 ft
Arizona	Humphreys Peak	12,637 ft

The Continental Divide, which separates Atlantic-bound rivers from Pacific-bound rivers, follows the crest of the Rockies through five of these states. In Colorado alone the Divide crosses roughly 700 miles of terrain. The San Juan Mountains in the southwest, the Sawatch Range in the center, and the Front Range near Denver are the three densest clusters of high peaks in the state. Wyoming's Wind River Range holds Gannett Peak plus seven of the ten largest glaciers in the US Rocky Mountains.

The Appalachian states

The Appalachian system is older and shorter than the Rockies. Peaks formed roughly 480 million years ago in the Ordovician period have been ground down by erosion to rounded ridges rarely above 7,000 feet. What the range lacks in height it makes up for in reach, crossing 14 states from north Georgia to central Maine. The Appalachian Trail follows the crest for about 2,197 miles.

The 14 states with an Appalachian ridge, from south to north:

• Georgia: Brasstown Bald, 4,784 ft. Southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail is at Springer Mountain.
• North Carolina: Mount Mitchell, 6,684 ft. The tallest peak east of the Mississippi River.
• Tennessee: Clingmans Dome, 6,643 ft. Sits on the North Carolina line inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
• Virginia: Mount Rogers, 5,711 ft. The state's Blue Ridge section is the widest.
• West Virginia: Spruce Knob, 4,863 ft. The state motto "Montani semper liberi" means Mountaineers are always free.
• Maryland: Hoye-Crest on Backbone Mountain, 3,370 ft.
• Pennsylvania: Mount Davis, 3,213 ft. The Alleghenies cover roughly half the state.
• New Jersey: High Point, 1,803 ft. Northern tip of the Kittatinny Ridge.
• New York: Mount Marcy, 5,343 ft. Located in the Adirondacks, geologically distinct from the main Appalachian belt but usually grouped with it.
• Connecticut: Mount Frissell south slope, 2,379 ft.
• Massachusetts: Mount Greylock, 3,491 ft. In the Berkshires.
• Vermont: Mount Mansfield, 4,395 ft. The Green Mountains give the state its name.
• New Hampshire: Mount Washington, 6,288 ft. Home of the White Mountains and once the site of the highest recorded surface wind on Earth outside a hurricane at 231 mph in 1934.
• Maine: Mount Katahdin, 5,267 ft. Northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.

Alabama sits at the very southern tail of the range, with Cheaha Mountain at 2,408 feet. Ohio, South Carolina, and Kentucky each contain a sliver of the Appalachian Plateau or Blue Ridge foothills but are usually classified as marginal.

Sierra Nevada, Cascades, and the Pacific ranges

The Sierra Nevada is a single fault-block range about 400 miles long, almost entirely inside California. Its crest holds Mount Whitney at 14,505 feet, the tallest peak in the lower 48 states. The Sierra also contains Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park, and Lake Tahoe. Only a small section spills into Nevada near the Tahoe basin.

The Cascade Range runs north from Lassen Peak in California through Oregon and Washington into British Columbia. Unlike the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades are volcanic, and every high peak is a stratovolcano. The Cascade Volcanic Arc holds Mount Rainier (Washington, 14,411 ft), Mount Adams (12,281 ft), Mount Hood (Oregon, 11,249 ft), Mount Shasta (California, 14,179 ft), and Mount Saint Helens (Washington, 8,363 ft, reduced from 9,677 ft by the 1980 eruption).

Beyond these two giants, the Pacific Coast holds the Coast Ranges (California, Oregon, Washington) and the Olympic Mountains of northwestern Washington, where Mount Olympus reaches 7,980 feet inside a temperate rainforest.

Alaska, Hawaii, and the outliers

Alaska is where American mountains reach absurd scale. Denali is the tallest peak in North America at 20,310 feet, and its base-to-summit rise of over 18,000 feet is larger than that of Mount Everest, which starts on the 17,000-foot Tibetan Plateau. Alaska contains all of the ten highest peaks in the United States. The top four:

• Denali, 20,310 ft (Alaska Range)
• Mount Saint Elias, 18,008 ft (Saint Elias Mountains, on the Canadian border)
• Mount Foraker, 17,400 ft (Alaska Range)
• Mount Bona, 16,550 ft (Saint Elias Mountains)

Hawaii's mountains are shield volcanoes built from the sea floor. Mauna Kea rises 13,803 feet above sea level but roughly 33,500 feet from its underwater base, which by that measure makes it the tallest mountain on Earth. Mauna Loa, right next door on the Big Island, is the largest active volcano by volume on the planet.

A handful of eastern states carry small isolated highlands that are not part of the Appalachian belt. The Ozark Plateau covers southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, with Magazine Mountain at 2,753 feet as the Arkansas high point. The Ouachita Mountains in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma are one of the few east-west trending ranges in North America. South Dakota holds the Black Hills, an isolated uplift topped by Black Elk Peak at 7,244 feet, the tallest point east of the Rockies.

States with essentially no mountains

Not every state has a range worth naming. The following states have their high point on a hill, a bluff, or a low rise rather than a mountain:

• Florida, Britton Hill, 345 ft
• Delaware, near Ebright Azimuth, about 450 ft
• Louisiana, Driskill Mountain, 535 ft
• Mississippi, Woodall Mountain, 807 ft
• Rhode Island, Jerimoth Hill, 811 ft
• Indiana, Hoosier Hill, 1,257 ft
• Illinois, Charles Mound, 1,235 ft
• Iowa, Hawkeye Point, 1,670 ft
• Kansas, Mount Sunflower, 4,041 ft (deceptively named; it is a gentle prairie rise)
• North Dakota, White Butte, 3,508 ft

Kansas is a useful reminder that elevation and topography are different measures. Kansas averages higher than New York state, but its terrain is almost flat because the elevation change happens gradually across hundreds of miles as the Great Plains tilt west toward the Rockies.

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