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Rocky Mountains
North America's continental backbone, stretching nearly 4,800 km
The Rockies form the rugged spine of western North America, a broad system of ranges running close to 4,800 kilometres from British Columbia down into New Mexico. They are not a single ridge but a stack of parallel chains separated by high parks and broad basins, their crest tracing the Continental Divide that splits the continent's waters between Pacific and Atlantic drainages. Snowmelt from these peaks fills the Colorado, the Missouri, and the Rio Grande, making the range the water tower of an arid West.
Geologically the Rockies are diverse and surprisingly old in part, with the main uplift dating to a mountain-building episode some 50 to 80 million years ago, later sculpted by Ice Age glaciers into the cirques and jagged horns seen today. The highest summit is Mount Elbert in Colorado, at about 4,401 metres, one of dozens of fourteeners in the state. The range runs through Canada and the United States and shelters vast tracts of conifer forest, alpine tundra, and some of the continent's most celebrated national parks.
Indigenous peoples hunted and traded across these mountains long before fur trappers and the Lewis and Clark expedition mapped routes through them. The discovery of gold and silver drew a rush of settlers in the nineteenth century, and the transcontinental railroads that breached the passes bound the young nation together. Today the Rockies are an outdoor playground and a conservation stronghold, anchored by Yellowstone, Banff, and Rocky Mountain national parks, even as warming threatens their snowpack.