Appalachian Mountains

Definition: Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

Noun

1. A mountain range in the eastern United States extending from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico; a historic barrier to early westward expansion of the United States.

Synonym: Appalachian Mountains

Synonym: Appalachians (n). (additional references)

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Specialty Definition: Appalachian Mountains

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Appalachian Mountains are a system of North American mountains running from Quebec, Canada to Alabama in the United States. The system is divided into a series of ranges, with the individual mountains averaging around 3000 ft. The highest of the group are Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina (6,684 ft.), the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi River, and Mt. Washington (6,288 ft.) in New Hampshire.

Regions

The major ranges comprising the Appalachian system include the Notre Dame Mountains in 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, West Virginia and Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains that run from southern Pennsylvania to North Georgia. South of New York, the mountains are loosely organized into two large plateau regions, the Allegheny Plateau in western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, and the Cumberland Plateau in southern West Virginia, western Virginia, eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. On the eastern and southeastern fringe of the plateau areas lies a ridge and valley province of elongated, parallel ridges, including the Blue Ridge.

These mountains are a geographical boundary between the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and the Midwestern regions of the country. The territory of Great Britain's thirteen original colonies in North America extended as far west as the summit line of the mountains (except in the northern regions where the Great Lakes formed the boundary). With the formation of the United States, an important first phase of westward expansion in the late 18th century and early 19th century consisted of the migration of European-descended settlers westward across the mountains into the Ohio Valley through the Cumberland Gap and other mountain passes.

The Appalachian Trail is a 2,160 mile hiking trail that runs all the way from Mt. Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia, passing over or past a large part of the Appalachian system.

Geology

The Appalachians are old mountains. A look at rocks exposed in today's Appalachian mountains reveals 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. The birth of the Appalachian ranges, some 480 million years ago, marks the first of several mountain building plate collisions that culminated in the construction of the supercontinent Pangea with the Appalachians near the center.

During the middle Ordovician Period (about 440-480 million years ago), a change in plate motions set the stage for the first Paleozoic mountain building event (Taconic orogeny) in North America. The once quiet, Appalachian passive margin changed to a very active plate boundary when a neighboring oceanic plate, the Iapetus, collided with and began sinking beneath the North American craton. With the birth of this new subduction zone, the early Appalachians were born. Along the continental margin, volcanoes grew, coincident with the initiation of subduction. Thrust faulting uplifted and warped older sedimentary rock laid down on the passive margin. As mountains rose, erosion began to wear them down. Streams carried rock debris downslope to be deposited in nearby lowlands. The Taconic Orogeny was just the first of a series of mountain building plate collisions that contributed to the formation of the Appalachians.

By the end of the Mesozoic era, the Appalachian Mountains had been eroded to an almost flat plain. It was not until the region was uplifted during the Cenozoic Era that the distinctive topography of the present formed. Uplift rejuvenated the streams, which rapidly responded by cutting downward into the ancient bedrock. Some streams flowed along weak layers that define the folds and faults created many millions of years earlier. Other streams downcut so rapidly that they cut right across the resistant folded rocks of the mountain core, carving canyons across rock layers and geologic structures.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Appalachian Mountains."

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Crosswords: Appalachian Mountains

English words defined with "Appalachian Mountains": Alleghenies, Allegheny Mountains, Appalachia ♦ Cherokee ♦ Potomac, Potomac River. (references)

Specialty definitions using "Appalachian Mountains": Appalachian coalfield, Appalachian orogeny. (references)

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Commercial Usage: Appalachian Mountains

Domain	Title
Books	Belled Buzzards, Hucksters & Grieving Spectres: Strange & True Tales of the Appalachian Mountains (reference) A New Species of Desmognathus (Amphibia: Caudata: Plethodontidae from the Southern Appalachian Mountains) (reference) American Folk Tales and Songs, and Other Examples of English-American Tradition As Preserved in the Appalachian Mountains and Elsewhere in the United (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Image Slideshow: Appalachian Mountains

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Photo Album: Appalachian Mountains

Thumbnail	Description & Credit	Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	Wave clouds associated with air flow over the Appalachian Mountains. Great Lakes show to the west. Photo taken from TIROS VII, pass 4363, camera 1, frame 10. Picture of the Month, "Monthly Weather Review," June 1964. Credit: NOAA in Space.		The U. S. northeast and mid-Atlantic coast as observed by a polar orbiting operational environmental satellite. Coastline configuration, snow-cover, and cloud cover are all evident in this image. The surface structure of the Appalachian Mountains is also evident as snow covers the ridges. Credit: NOAA in Space.
	Mountain farmhouse in Appalachian Mountains. Credit: Library of Congress.		Mountain home, Appalachian Mountains, housed two white families. Credit: Library of Congress.
	Interior of mountain farmhouse, Appalachian Mountains near Marshall, North Carolina. Credit: Library of Congress.		Terracing and cotton patch with Appalachian Mountains in the distance. Near Cornelia, Georgia. Credit: Library of Congress.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Expression: Appalachian Mountains

Expression using "Appalachian Mountains": the appalachian mountains. Additional references.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translation: Appalachian Mountains

Language		Translations for "Appalachian Mountains"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Dutch		Appalachen. (various references)

French		Appalaches. (various references)

Hungarian		appalache-hegység (the appalachian mountains). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		アパラチア山脈 (apartheid, Appalachians). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		アパラチアさ�"みゃく (Appalachians). (various references)

Pig Latin		appalachianay ountainsmay

Russian		Аппалачские горы (Appalachians), Аппалачи (Appalachians). (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Alternative Orthography: Appalachian Mountains

Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

41 70 70 61 6C 61 63 68 69 61 6E 4D 6F 75 6E 74 61 69 6E 73

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01000001 01110000 01110000 01100001 01101100 01100001 01100011 01101000 01101001 01100001 01101110 00100000 01001101 01101111 01110101 01101110 01110100 01100001 01101001 01101110 01110011

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#65 &#112 &#112 &#97 &#108 &#97 &#99 &#104 &#105 &#97 &#110 &#32 &#77 &#111 &#117 &#110 &#116 &#97 &#105 &#110 &#115

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

0041 0070 0070 0061 006C 0061 0063 0068 0069 0061 006E 004D 006F 0075 006E 0074 0061 0069 006E 0073

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

35828267786769747567802478187808667758085

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Non-English Dictionaries with "Appalachian Mountains"

Language	Coverage	Language Translations
Dutch	woordenboek, definitie, translatie	néerlandais, holland, голландский
French	dictionnaire, définition, traduction	français, francia, フレコン化 , 仏文 , フランス�" , 仏 , ふつぶ�", ふつ, フレンチ , フランセ , французский
Hungarian	szótár, meghatározás, definíció, fordítás	Hongaarse, hongrois, magyar, венгр, венгерский
Japanese Kanji	辭典 , 辞典 , 字引 , 辞林 , 字書 , ディーゼル電気車 , 言海 , 辞彙 , 辞書 , 確定 , ディーゼル電気車 , デ�'ドロ酢酸 , 翻訳	Japonais, japán, 邦語 , 邦人 , ジャスミン茶 , ほう�", ジャパニーズ , ほうじ�", японский, японец
Japanese Katakana	じい, じびき, じて�", ディクショナリー , じり�", じしょ, �'�"かい, ディクショナリ , デフィニション , ディフィニション , ていぎ, かくてい, へい�"ういどう, やくじゅつ, トランスレーション , やくしょ, やくしゅつ, �"うどく, ほ�"やく, ほ�"やくしょ	Japonais, japán, 邦語 , 邦人 , ジャスミン茶 , ほう�", ジャパニーズ , ほうじ�", японский, японец
Russian	словарь, определение, трансляция, сдвиг, перевод, перемещение	orosz, ロシア語 , ロシア�", русский
English	Dictionary, Definition, Translation	anglais, angol, английский

INDEX

1. Definition
2. Synonyms
3. Crosswords
4. Usage: Commercial

5. Images: Slideshow
6. Images: Photo Album
7. Expressions
8. Translations: Modern

9. Orthography
10. Bibliography

Appalachian Mountains

Definition: Appalachian Mountains