Appalachian Mountains Information

The Appalachian Mountains are old mountains. Their birth occurred some 680 million years ago. The rocks exposed in the Appalachian Mountains reveal elongated belts of folded and thrust faulted marine sedimentary rocks, volcanic rocks and slivers of ancient ocean floor, which provides strong evidence that these rocks were deformed during plate collision. Since North America and Africa were connected, the Appalachian Mountains form part of the same mountain chain as the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. The Appalachian Mountains contain major deposits of coal. In the folded mountains the coal is in metamorphosed form as anthracite represented by the coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania. The coal fields of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia are bituminous coal, which is the sedimentary form.

The Appalachian Mountains are located in Eastern North America, extending from Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada to Alabama in the United States, although the northernmost mainland portion ends at the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec. The system is divided into a series of ranges which include the Long Range Mountains in Newfoundland, the Notre Dame Mountains in New Brunswick and Quebec, the Longfellow Mountains in Maine, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Green Mountains in Vermont, the Taconic Mountains in Vermont and Massachusetts, the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts, the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia, the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains that run from southern Pennsylvania to North Georgia. Of these ranges, the Blue Ridge Mountains are the easternmost and highest range, and are protected in part by two national parks, Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Tennessee/North Carolina) and Shenandoah National Park (Virginia), as well as many national and state forests. The area of dissected plateau to the north and west of the mountains includes the Catskill Mountains of southeastern New York, the Allegheny Plateau of southwestern New York, western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and northern West Virginia, and the Cumberland Plateau in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, western Virginia, eastern Tennessee.

The Appalachian Mountain system averages 3,000 ft, and rising to Mt. Mitchell (6,684ft) in the south and Mt. Washington (6,288 ft) in the north. The most popular attraction for mountain hiking enthusiasts is the Appalachian trail, a 2,050 mile hiking trail that winds through forested mountains from Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to Mount Katahdin, Maine. This trek crosses portions of fourteen states including Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and generally takes five to six months to complete.