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Appalachian Mountains
Eastern North America's ancient, worn-down range
The Appalachians are among the oldest mountains on Earth, a long, rounded range that runs about 3,300 kilometres down eastern North America from Newfoundland to Alabama. Time has softened them into forested ridges and broad valleys, their summits gentle where the Rockies and Alps are jagged, yet they shaped the settlement of a continent, walling early colonists against the interior. Cloaked in some of the richest temperate forest in the world, they blaze with colour each autumn and fade into the famous blue haze that names the Blue Ridge.
These mountains are the eroded roots of a great range thrown up roughly 300 to 480 million years ago, in collisions that helped assemble the supercontinent Pangaea, including the event that joined what is now Africa to North America. The highest peak is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, at about 2,037 metres, the loftiest summit east of the Mississippi. The range is a series of parallel ridges and valleys, rich in coal and minerals, and a biodiversity hotspot whose forests shelter an extraordinary variety of salamanders, trees, and wildflowers.
The Appalachians long marked the frontier of colonial America, until routes such as the Cumberland Gap opened the way west and reshaped the young United States. Their coal and timber fuelled industrialisation and left a hard legacy in the mountain communities of Appalachia, with their distinctive music and culture. The 3,500-kilometre Appalachian Trail now runs the length of the range, and protected areas including Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited in the country, guard their storied forests.