The
Rocky Mountains (or
Rockies)
are a major
mountain range in western
North America.
The Rocky Mountains
stretch more than from the northernmost part of British
Columbia, in Canada, to New Mexico, in the United States. The range's highest peak is Mount Elbert in Colorado at above
sea level. Though part of North
America's Pacific Cordillera, the
Rockies are distinct from the Pacific Coast Ranges (as named in
Canada) or Pacific Mountain System (as known in the United States),
which are located immediately adjacent to the Pacific coast.
The
eastern edge of the Rockies rises impressively above the Interior Plains of central North America,
including the Front Range of Colorado, the
Wind River Range and Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, the
Absaroka-Beartooth ranges and Rocky Mountain Front of Montana, and the
Clark Range of Alberta.
In Canada
geographers define three main groups of ranges: the Continental
Ranges, Hart Ranges and
Muskwa Ranges (the latter two flank
the Peace River, the only river to
pierce the Rockies, and are collectively referred to as the
Northern Rockies). Mount Robson in British Columbia, at , is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. The Muskwa and Hart
Ranges together comprise what is known as the Northern Rockies (the Mackenzie
Mountains north of the Liard River are sometimes referred to as being part of the
Rockies but this is an unofficial designation).
The
western edge of the Rockies includes subranges such as the Wasatch near Salt Lake City and the Bitterroots along the Idaho-Montana
border. The Great Basin
and Columbia River
Plateau separate these subranges from distinct ranges
further to the west, most prominent among which are the Sierra Nevada, Cascade Range and Coast Mountains. The Rockies do not extend into the Yukon or Alaska, or into
central British Columbia, where the Rocky Mountain
System (but not the Rocky Mountains) includes the Columbia Mountains, the southward
extension of which is considered part of the Rockies in the United
States. The
Rocky
Mountain System within the United States is a
United States physiographic
region; the Rocky Mountain System is known in Canada as the
Eastern System.
Geography and geology
The Rocky
Mountains are commonly defined as stretching from the Liard River in British Columbia south to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Other mountain ranges
continue beyond those two rivers, including the Selwyn Range in Yukon, the
Brooks Range in Alaska, and the
Sierra Madre in Mexico, but those
are not part of the Rockies, though they are part of the American
cordillera. The United States definition of the Rockies,
however, includes the Cabinet and
Salish
Mountains of Idaho and Montana, whereas their counterparts
north of the Kootenai River, the
Columbia Mountains, are
considered a separate system in Canada, lying to the west of the
huge Rocky
Mountain Trench, which runs the length of British Columbia from its
beginnings in the middle Flathead
River valley in western Montana to the south bank of the
Liard
River. The Rockies vary in width from 70 to 300
miles (110 to 480 kilometers).
Also west of the Rocky Mountain Trench,
farther north and facing the Muskwa
Range across the trench, are the Stikine Ranges and Omineca Mountains of the Interior
Mountains system of British Columbia. A small area east of
Prince
George, British Columbia on the eastern side of the Trench, the McGregor
Plateau, resembles the Rockies but is considered part of
the Interior
Plateau.
The younger ranges of the Rocky Mountains uplifted during the late
Cretaceous period (100 million – 65
million years ago), although some portions of the southern
mountains date from uplifts during the
Precambrian (3,980 million – 600 million years
ago). The mountains' geology is a complex of
igneous and
metamorphic rock; younger
sedimentary rock occurs along the margins
of the southern Rocky Mountains, and volcanic rock from the
Tertiary (65 million – 1.8 million years
ago) occurs in the
San Juan
Mountains and in other areas. Millennia of severe erosion in
the
Wyoming Basin transformed
intermountain basins into a relatively flat terrain.
The Tetons and other
north-central ranges contain folded and faulted rocks of Paleozoic and Mesozoic age
draped above cores of Proterozoic and
Archean igneous and metamorphic rocks
ranging in age from 1.2 billion (e.g., Tetons) to more than 3.3
billion years (Beartooth
Mountains).
Periods of glaciation occurred from the
Pleistocene Epoch (1.8 million – 70,000 years
ago) to the
Holocene Epoch (fewer than
11,000 years ago). Recent episodes included the
Bull Lake Glaciation that began about
150,000 years ago and the
Pinedale
Glaciation that probably remained at full glaciation until
15,000–20,000 years ago. Ninety percent of Yellowstone National
Park was covered by ice during the Pinedale Glaciation.The
little ice age was a period of glacial
advance that lasted a few centuries from about 1550 to 1860.
For
example, the Agassiz and Jackson glaciers in Glacier
National Park reached their most forward positions about 1860
during the Little Ice
Age.
Water in its many forms sculpted the present Rocky Mountain
landscape. Runoff and snowmelt from the peaks feed Rocky Mountain
rivers and lakes with the water supply for one-quarter of the
United States.
The rivers that flow from the
Rocky Mountains eventually drain into three of the world's
Oceans: the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean.
The
Continental Divide is located in
the Rocky Mountains and designates the line at which waters flow
either to the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. Triple Divide Peak (8,020 feet / 2,444 m) in Glacier
National Park is so named because water that falls on the
mountain reaches not only the Atlantic and Pacific, but Hudson Bay as well. Farther north in Alberta, the Athabasca and
other rivers feed the basin of the Mackenzie River, which has its outlet on the Beaufort Sea of the Arctic Ocean.
Human history
Since the last great Ice Age, the Rocky Mountains were home first
to
Paleo-Indians and then to the
indigenous
peoples, including the
Apache,
Arapaho,
Bannock,
Blackfoot,
Cheyenne,
Crow,
Flathead,
Shoshoni,
Sioux,
Ute,
Kutenai (Ktunaxa in Canada),
Sekani,
Dunne-za, and others.
Paleo-Indians hunted the now-extinct
mammoth
and
ancient bison (an animal 20%
larger than modern bison) in the foothills and valleys of the
mountains. Like the modern tribes that followed them, Paleo-Indians
probably migrated to the plains in fall and winter for bison and to
the mountains in spring and summer for
fish,
deer,
elk,
roots, and
berries. In Colorado,
along the crest of the Continental Divide, rock walls that Native
Americans built for driving game date back 5,400–5,800 years. A
growing body of scientific evidence indicates that indigenous
peoples had significant effects on mammal populations by hunting
and on vegetation patterns through deliberate burning.
Recent human history of the Rocky Mountains is one of more rapid
change. The Spanish explorer
Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado—with a group of soldiers, missionaries, and African
slaves—marched into the Rocky Mountain region from the south in
1540. The introduction of the horse, metal tools, rifles, new
diseases, and different cultures profoundly changed the Native
American cultures. Native American populations were extirpated from
most of their historical ranges by disease, warfare, habitat loss
(eradication of the bison), and continued assaults on their
culture.
Colorado Rockies.
In 1739,
French fur traders Pierre and Paul Mallet, while
journeying through the Great Plains, discovered a range of mountains at the headwaters
of the Platte River, which local
American
Indian tribes called the "Rockies", becoming the first
Europeans to report on this uncharted mountain range.
Sir Alexander MacKenzie (1764 –
March 11, 1820) became the first European to cross the Rocky
Mountains in 1793. He found the upper reaches of the Fraser River
and reached the Pacific coast of what is now Canada on July 20 of
that year, completing the first recorded transcontinental crossing
of North America north of Mexico.
He arrived at Bella Coola,
British Columbia, where he first reached saltwater at South Bentinck
Arm, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean.
The
Lewis and Clark
Expedition (1804–1806) was the first scientific reconnaissance
of the Rocky Mountains. Specimens were collected for contemporary
botanists, zoologists, and geologists. The expedition was said to
have paved the way to (and through) the Rocky Mountains for
European-Americans from the East, although Lewis and Clark met at
least 11 European-American mountain men during their travels.
Mountain men, primarily French, Spanish, and British, roamed the
Rocky Mountains from 1720 to 1800 seeking mineral deposits and
furs.
The
fur-trading North West Company
established Rocky Mountain
House as a trading post in what is now the Rocky
Mountain Foothills of present-day Alberta in 1799, and their business
rivals the Hudson's Bay Company
established Acton House nearby. These posts served as bases
for most European activity in the Canadian Rockies in the early
1800s. Among the most notable are the expeditions of
David Thompson , who followed the
Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. On his 1811 expedition, he
camped at the junction of the Columbia River and the Snake River
and erected a pole and notice claiming the area for Great Britain
and stating the intention of the
North West Company to build a fort at the
site.
By the
Anglo-American
Convention of 1818, which established the 49th Parallel as the international boundary
west from Lake of the
Woods to the "Stony Mountains"; the UK and the USA agreed
to what has since been described as "joint occupancy" of lands
further west to the Pacific
Ocean. Resolution of the territorial and treaty
issues, the
Oregon dispute, was
deferred until a later time.
In 1819,
Spain ceded their rights north of the 42nd Parallel to
the United States, though these rights did not include possession
and also included obligations to Britain and Russia concerning
their claims in the same region.
After 1802, American
fur traders and
explorers ushered in the first widespread
Caucasian presence in the Rockies south of
the 49th parallel. The more famous of these include Americans
William Henry Ashley,
Jim Bridger,
Kit
Carson,
John Colter,
Thomas Fitzpatrick,
Andrew Henry, and
Jedediah Smith.
On July 24, 1832,
Benjamin Bonneville led the
first wagon train across the Rocky
Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass. Similarly, in the wake of Mackenzie's 1793
expedition, fur trading posts were established west of the Northern Rockies in a region of the
northern Interior
Plateau of British Columbia which came to be known as
New Caledonia, beginning with
Fort
McLeod (today's community of McLeod Lake]] and Fort Fraser, but ultimately focussed on Stuart Lake Post
(today's Fort St.
James).
Negotiations with Great Britain over the next few decades failed to settle upon a
compromise boundary and the Oregon
Dispute became important in geopolitical diplomacy between the
British Empire and the new American Republic. Disputed
joint-occupancy by Britain and the U.S.A., lasted until June 15,
1846, when Britain ceded their claims to this land with the
Oregon Treaty.
In 1841
James Sinclair, Chief
Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, guided some 200 settlers from
the Red River Colony west to
bolster settlement around Fort Vancouver in an attempt to retain the Columbia District for Britain.
The party
crossed the Rockies into the Columbia
Valley, a region of the Rocky Mountain Trench near present-day Radium Hot Springs, British
Columbia, then
traveled south. Despite such efforts, in 1846, Britain ceded
all claim to
Columbia District
lands south of the 49th parallel to the United States; as
resolution to the Oregon boundary dispute by the
Oregon Treaty.
Thousands passed through the Rocky Mountains on the
Oregon Trail beginning in 1842.
The Mormons began to settle near the Great Salt
Lake in 1847. From 1859 to 1864, gold
was discovered in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and
British
Columbia, sparking
several gold rushes bringing thousands of
prospectors and miners to explore every mountain and canyon and to
create the Rocky Mountains' first major industry. The Idaho
gold rush alone produced more gold than the California and Alaska
gold rushes combined and was important in the financing of the
Union Army during the
American Civil War.
The transcontinental railroad was
completed in 1869, and Yellowstone National Park was established as the world's first national
park in 1872. A transcontinental railroad in Canada was
originally promised in 1871, but was not completed until 1885 due
to political reasons, but was eventually built via the Kicking
Horse Pass and Rogers Pass after consideration of a number of
other routes. Thanks to the vision of the railway's
promoters, vast areas of the Canadian Rockies were set aside as
Jasper, Glacier (BC), Banff and Yoho National Parks, laying the
foundation for a tourism industry which thrives to this day.
Glacier National Park (MT) was established with a similar
relationship to tourism promotions by the
Northern Pacific Railroad. While
settlers filled the valleys and mining towns, conservation and
preservation ethics began to take hold. U.S.
President Harrison established several
forest reserves in the Rocky Mountains in 1891–1892. In 1905, U.S.
President Theodore Roosevelt extended the
Medicine Bow Forest
Reserve to include the area now managed as Rocky
Mountain National Park. Economic development began to center on
mining,
forestry,
agriculture, and
recreation, as well as on the service industries
that support them. Tents and camps became ranches and farms, forts
and train stations became towns, and some towns became
cities.
Industry and development
Economic resources of the Rocky Mountains are varied and abundant.
Minerals found in the Rocky Mountains
include significant deposits of
copper,
gold,
lead,
molybdenum,
silver,
tungsten, and
zinc. The
Wyoming Basin and several smaller areas contain significant
reserves of
coal,
natural gas,
oil shale,
and
petroleum.
For example, the
Climax mine, located near Leadville, Colorado, was the largest producer of Molybdenum in the world. Molybdenum is
used in heat-resistant steel in such things as cars and planes. The
Climax mine employed over 3,000 workers.
The Coeur
d’Alene mine of northern Idaho produces silver, lead,
and zinc. Canada's largest coal
mines are near Fernie, British Columbia and Sparwood, British Columbia; additional coal mines exist near Hinton,
Alberta, and in the Northern Rockies surrounding
Tumbler
Ridge, British Columbia.
Abandoned mines with their wakes of mine tailings and toxic wastes
dot the Rocky Mountain landscape. In one major example, eighty
years of zinc mining profoundly polluted the river and bank near
Eagle River in north-central
Colorado. High concentrations of the metal carried by spring runoff
harmed
algae,
moss, and
trout populations. An economic analysis of
mining effects at this site revealed declining property values,
degraded water quality, and the loss of recreational opportunities.
The analysis also revealed that cleanup of the river could yield
$2.3 million in additional revenue from recreation. In 1983, the
former owner of the zinc mine was sued by the Colorado Attorney
General for the $4.8 million cleanup costs; five years later,
ecological recovery was considerable.
Agriculture and forestry are major industries. Agriculture includes
dryland and irrigated farming and
livestock grazing. Livestock are frequently moved
between high-elevation summer
pastures and
low-elevation winter pastures, a practice known as
transhumance.
Human population is not very dense in the Rocky Mountains, with an
average of four people per square kilometer (10 per square mile)
and few cities with over 50,000 people. However, the human
population grew rapidly in the Rocky Mountain states between 1950
and 1990. The 40-year statewide increases in population range from
35% in Montana to about 150% in Utah and Colorado. The populations
of several mountain towns and communities have doubled in the last
40 years.
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, increased 260%, from 1,244 to 4,472 residents, in
40 years.
Tourism
See also:
List of U.S.
Rocky Mountain ski resorts,
List of Alberta
ski resorts,
List of
B.C. ski resorts
Every year the scenic areas and recreational opportunities of the
Rocky Mountains draw millions of tourists. The main language of the
Rocky Mountains is
English. But
there are also linguistic pockets of
Spanish and
Native American
languages.
French is an official
language in Canada's national parks.
People from all over the world visit the sites to hike, camp, or
engage in mountain sports. In the summer season, the main tourist
attractions are:
In the United States:
In Canada, the mountain range contains these
national parks:
Glacier
National Park in Montana and Waterton Lakes National Park in
Alberta border each other and collectively are known as Waterton-Glacier International Peace
Park. (See also
International Peace Park.)
In the winter,
skiing is the main attraction.
A list of the major ski resorts can be found at
List of U.S.
Rocky Mountain ski resorts.
The
adjacent Columbia Mountains in
British Columbia contain major resorts such as, Fernie, Panorama and Kicking Horse, as well as Mount
Revelstoke National Park and Glacier National Park.
There are
numerous provincial
parks in the British Columbia Rockies, the largest and most
notable being Mount Assiniboine Provincial
Park, Mount Robson Provincial Park, Northern
Rocky Mountains Provincial Park, Kwadacha Wilderness Provincial
Park, Stone Mountain Provincial
Park and Muncho Lake Provincial Park.
Climate
The Rocky Mountains have a highland climate. The average annual
temperature in the valley bottoms of the Colorado Rockies near the
latitude of Boulder is 43 °F (6 °C). July is the hottest month
there with an average temperature of 82 °F (28 °C). In January, the
average monthly temperature is 7 °F (−14 °C), making it the
region's coldest month. The average precipitation per year there is
approximately 14 inches (360 mm).
The summers in this area of the Rockies are warm and dry, because
the western fronts impede the advancing of water-carrying storm
systems. The average temperature in summer is 59 °F (15 °C) and the
average precipitation is 5.9 inches (150 mm). Winter is usually wet
and very cold, with an average temperature of 28 °F (−2 °C) and
average snowfall of 11.4 inches (29.0 cm). In spring, the average
temperature is 40 °F (4 °C) and the average precipitation is 4.2
inches (107 mm). And in the fall, the average precipitation is 2.6
inches (66 mm) and the average temperature is 44 °F (7 °C).
See also
References
- (public domain source)
- PBS—THE WEST—Events from 1650 to 1800
External links