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North American ranges

29 articles

Alaska Range

The Alaska Range is a 600-mile mountain arc across southern Alaska, highest at Denali (Mount McKinley), 20,310 ft, North America's tallest peak, uplifted along the active Denali fault and heavily glaciated.

Aleutian Ridge

Aleutian Ridge: mostly submerged cordillera of the Aleutian arc, Alaska, carrying the Aleutian Islands on a pedestal above the Aleutian Trench; Pacific plate subducts beneath North America at 55-90 mm/yr.

Apaneca Range

Apaneca Range (Cuyanausul Range): chain of Pleistocene-Holocene stratovolcanoes in western El Salvador, highest peak Cerro el Aguila 2,028 m; no Holocene eruptions but fumaroles, the Ahuachapán geothermal field since 1975, and deadly 1990 and 2025 hydrothermal explosions.

Babine

Babine names a lake, river, and mountain range in central British Columbia, from the French "babine" (lip) applied by fur-trade voyageurs to Carrier people wearing labrets. Babine Lake is Canada's largest sockeye nursery, producing up to 90% of Skeena sockeye.

Bitterroot Range

Bitterroot Range, also called Bitterroot Mountains, a roughly 450-mile Rocky Mountain range along the Idaho-Montana border; highest point Trapper Peak (10,157 ft), home of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and crossed by Lewis and Clark in 1805.

Brooks Range

Brooks Range: east-west mountain range across northern Alaska, northernmost extension of the Rocky Mountains, about 970 km long, highest point Mount Isto (2,735.6 m), formed by a Jurassic-Cretaceous fold-and-thrust orogeny.

Cassiar Mountains

Cassiar Mountains: mountain system in far northern British Columbia extending into the Yukon, named from Kaska, adopted 1917; site of the 1870s gold rush, Cassiar asbestos town, and jade and gold mining.

Chugach Mountains

Chugach Mountains: Alaskan range about 400 km long along the Gulf of Alaska, from Turnagain Arm to the Bering Glacier area; holds one-third of Alaska's glacierized area, including the 5,200 km2 Bering Glacier.

Coast Mountains

Coast Mountains (Chaîne Côtière): major Pacific Coast Ranges system from the Fraser River near Vancouver north through British Columbia and the Alaska Panhandle into Yukon, about 1,600 km long, granitic Coast Mountains batholith, Mount Waddington 4,016 m, heavy coastal rainfall and fjords.

Columbia Kootenay Mountain

Columbia Kootenay Mountain is the Kootenay Land District record for the Columbia Mountains of southeastern British Columbia: the Purcell, Selkirk, Monashee, and Caribou ranges between the Rocky Mountain Trench and the Interior Plateau, older than the Canadian Rockies.

Cordillera

A cordillera is an extensive system of parallel mountain ranges, chains, and plateaus, a Spanish word first applied to the Andes and used in English from 1704.

HP Sierra la Madera

Sierra la Madera, labeled HP Sierra la Madera on Cuatrociénegas-area maps, names two Mexican ranges: a 1,985 m granitic Sonora pluton in the Magdalena metamorphic core complex, and a Coahuila anticlinal limestone sierra.

Klamath Mountains

Klamath Mountains: mountain range of northwestern California and southwestern Oregon, largest subrange the Siskiyous; accreted-terrane geology, serpentine soils, over 3,500 plant taxa, richest temperate conifer flora, Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

Landforms named Bee, Wasp and Hornet

Landforms named Bee, Wasp and Hornet are natural features with insect-derived names, from Bee Mountain in Texas to Antarctic Wasp Hill, which actually commemorates a sealing schooner.

Laurentides

Laurentides (Laurentians) names both an ancient eroded mountain range in southern Quebec, formed by the Grenvillian orogeny within the Grenville Province, and the Quebec tourist region of 20,548 km2 with Mont-Tremblant park and about 2.1 G$ in annual tourism spending.

Mackenzie Mountains

Mackenzie Mountains, northern Canadian Cordillera range in NWT and Yukon, Canada; known for >10 km of Neoproterozoic strata (Mackenzie Mountains and Windermere supergroups), Rapitan glacial deposits, and Nahanni National Park Reserve.

Maya Mountains

The Maya Mountains are a mountain range in west-central Belize extending into Guatemala, rising to 1,124 meters at Doyle's Delight, Belize's highest peak, and covering about 4,000 square kilometers.

Mono-Inyo Craters

The Mono-Inyo Craters are an 18-mile chain of rhyolite lava domes, flows, and explosion craters on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada in Mono County, California.

Nevada, Sierra

Sierra Nevada (Nevada, Sierra), Spanish for snowy range, names several mountains: the granitic Sierra Nevada of California and western Nevada, Spain's Betic Sierra Nevada, and Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and del Cocuy.

Ogilvie Mountains

Ogilvie Mountains (Ogilvie Range): mountain range in Yukon, Canada, extending into Alaska, crossed by the Dempster Highway; named for surveyor William Ogilvie; Proterozoic-Triassic sedimentary rocks, restricted Pleistocene ice caps, endemic collared lemming.

Ouachita Highlands

The Ouachita Highlands are the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma, which with the Ozark Plateau form the U.S. Interior Highlands, with east-west ridges and elevations up to 839 m.

Pacific Coast Ranges

The Pacific Coast Ranges, also called the Coast Ranges, are a system of mountain ranges along the Pacific coast of North America, from Alaska into Mexico.

Salmon River Mountains

Salmon River Mountains: unorganized mountain mass in central Idaho, part of the Idaho Batholith; second largest batholith mountain group, ridges 7,000-9,000 ft, drained by the Salmon River and largely within the Frank Church Wilderness.

Selwyn Mountains (range/mtn, Canada)

The Selwyn Mountains are a mountain range of the northern Canadian Cordillera lying near the western border of the Northwest Territories and extending into Yukon, beside the Mackenzie Mountains.

Sierra El Viejo

Sierra El Viejo (Cerro Viejo, Sierra del Viejo) is a limestone mountain range near Caborca in northwestern Sonora, Mexico, 850 m high, with Precambrian rocks, bighorn sheep, and endemic agaves; distinct from a 3,500 m Nuevo León namesake.

Sierra Madre de Chiapas

Sierra Madre de Chiapas (Chiapas Sierra): 280-km Pacific-coast mountain range in southern Mexico averaging 2,000 m, part of the Maya block near the Cocos-Caribbean-North American triple junction, uplifted mainly in the Miocene, home to El Triunfo and La Sepultura biosphere reserves.

Sierra Madre del Sur (landform)

Sierra Madre del Sur, a mountain range in southern Mexico arcing from Michoacán to Oaxaca along the Pacific coast; about 1,100 km long, a Tertiary magmatic province, and a high-endemism biogeographic province and pine-oak ecoregion.

Sierra Madre Oriental

Sierra Madre Oriental: major folded mountain range in eastern Mexico, one of Mexico's 14 biogeographic provinces, over 1,000 km long, a Jurassic-Cretaceous limestone fold-thrust belt deformed during the Laramide orogeny.

Wrangell Mountains

The Wrangell Mountains are a volcanic range in southern Alaska hosting the Wrangell volcanic field, with active Mount Wrangell (4,317 m), northward-accreted terranes, and extensive glaciers in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.