The Rocky Mountains

The Rocky Mountains are the great mountain backbone of western North America, running roughly 3,000 miles from northern New Mexico up through Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho and on into Canada. Far younger and higher than the Appalachians, they are a tangle of many ranges thrown up over the last 70 million years, crowned in the United States by Colorado's Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet (4,401 m). They form the rugged spine of the American West.

The Continental Divide threads along the crest of the Rockies, splitting the flow of the continent: rain and snow falling on the western slope drain toward the Pacific, while the eastern slope feeds the Mississippi and the Atlantic. The mountains wring moisture from passing storms, leaving rain shadows and feeding the headwaters of great rivers — the Colorado, the Missouri, the Rio Grande, and the Columbia all rise here.

The snowpack stored in the Rockies each winter is the water tower of the West, releasing meltwater all summer to cities and farms hundreds of miles away across the arid plains and deserts below. From Yellowstone to the fourteeners of Colorado, the range holds many of the country's most famous wild landscapes.