Where is the appalachian mountains

The longest and biggest range of mountains in the eastern part of North America stretches from Canada to Alabama. It is called the Appalachian Mountains, and it is about 1,600 miles long. The Appalachians are made up of many smaller mountain ranges. In the northern part there are the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont. To the south and west of these are the Catskill Mountains in New York, the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, the Blue Ridge Mountains that stretch from Pennsylvania to Georgia, the Black Mountains of North Carolina, and the Unaka Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina. The Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina are also a part of the Appalachian chain. In the Appalachians there are many different kinds of minerals and ores, and some of them are very important, especially the coal mines of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

There have been many other interesting discoveries in the rocks that form the Appalachians. Geologists—scientists who study the earth—have found rocks far beneath the surface of the ground that tell them just about how old these mountains are, and when they first became mountains. They have learned that at one time a large part of the United States was a big shallow sea. Then, when the inside of the earth was cooling off, the surface ground crumpled and folded, and pushed the water back into what is now the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, this all happened millions of years ago, and it did not happen all at once. It was somewhat like the way an apple-dries up. The wrinkles do not appear at once, but first the skin seems to be a little loose, and gradually it puckers into deep wrinkles.

When the inside of the earth cooled, it cooled a little at a time, too, and the earth's crust wrinkled a little at a time. Later, great rivers of ice called glaciers slipped slowly south. They dug big valleys and lakes here and there, and scraped off some surfaces and made them smoother, or less wrinkled, than they had been. In some places the glaciers dragged big rocks with them and left them along the way also. None of the Appalachians are high enough to have snow on their peaks all year round, but some peaks reach heights over 6,000 feet. The highest is Mount Mitchell, in North Carolina, 6,684 feet, in the Black Mountains. Also in the Black Mountains is Balsam Cone, 6,645 feet. In the north, the highest peaks arc- Mount Washington in the White Mountains, with a height of 6,288 feet, and Mount Adams, also in the White Mountains, 5,798 feet.