North America
The third-largest continent, from the Arctic to the tropics
North America covers roughly 24.7 million square kilometers (9.5 million square miles), tapering from the frozen islands of the Canadian Arctic down through the temperate heart of a continent to the narrow tropical bridge of Central America. Bounded by the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans, it is a continent of room to spare — vast enough to hold Arctic tundra, prairie, eastern hardwood forest, southwestern desert, and Caribbean coastline within a single sweep.
A spine of mountains runs its length. The Rocky Mountains and the coastal ranges rise in the west, climaxing in Denali at 6,190 meters (20,310 feet), the highest peak on the continent. Down the center lies one of the world's great drainage systems, the Mississippi–Missouri, gathering the rain of the Great Plains and carrying it to the Gulf of Mexico. The Great Lakes hold a fifth of the planet's surface fresh water, while Death Valley sinks to 86 meters below sea level, the continent's lowest point.
Home to roughly 617 million people, North America concentrates much of its population in coastal and lakeside cities and along the U.S.–Mexico corridor. Its geography — sheltered harbors, navigable rivers, and a deep interior of fertile soil — helped make it one of the most productive agricultural and industrial regions on Earth, even as large stretches of its north remain among the least densely settled land in the world.