The Rockies

Lore & Background

The Rockies formed 55 to 80 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny, when plates slid under the North American plate. The name is a calque of the Plains Cree word asinîwaciy, meaning 'rocky mountain.' The range has never experienced a dense population.

In Their Own Story

The last out of the ninth. The scoreboard reads 4–3, and the Denver sky has turned that bruised purple it always gets when a storm is rolling in off the Continental Divide. The crowd at Coors Field is on its feet, not because the Rockies are winning—though they are—but because the pitcher on the mound is a local kid from a small town in the San Juans, and the whole city can feel the altitude in his legs. The batter swings. The ball leaves the bat with that sharp, high-pitched crack that only happens at five thousand feet, and for a half-second it hangs in the dry air above the left-field wall, above the downtown skyline, above the mountains that are just visible in the distance. Then it's gone. The roar that follows is not polite. It is the sound of a city that has been waiting its whole life for one clean hit, and it is not letting go.

Reader's Guide

Most of the highest summits are in Colorado, which has an average elevation of 6,800 feet (2,100 m). Public parks and forest lands protect much of the range, popular for hiking, camping, mountaineering, fishing, hunting, mountain biking, snowmobiling, skiing, and snowboarding.

Did You Know?

• The highest peak in the Rockies is Mount Elbert in Colorado at 14,440 feet (4,401 m).
• The Continental Divide runs through the Rockies; Triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park sends water to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Hudson Bay.
• The Canadian Rockies do not extend into Yukon, Northwest Territories, or central British Columbia according to Canadian geographers.