Interesting & Fun Facts About Rocky Mountains

No competition with the Himalayas or the Andes, but, still, credit should be given where deserved. The herculean and overpowering Rocky Mountains, popularly known as the Rockies, are a living legacy of the billions of years of history of our planet. Born and brought up, by natural forces, alongside the creatures that once roamed the earth – dinosaurs. Spreading over a vast expanse of 3,000 miles, connecting continents, and providing for the livelihood of many animals, plants, and humans alike, the Rockies are a marvel of nature. With many a picturesque landscapes, of snow clad mountains, lush forested areas, and exotic wildlife, spread across different countries in different continents, the Rocky Mountains continue to be living example of the era that has gone by but is still lurking somewhere around here. Striving to know about many more of such interesting facts about the Rocky Mountains? The next section we have prepared for you will throw light on some more of the interesting facts about them. Here, have a read!

Interesting & Amazing Facts About Rocky Mountains

Rocky Mountains were formed in the late Cretaceous period (about 80 to 55 million years ago) in the period, scientifically known as Laramide Orogeny, of mountain building in western North America.
Scientific findings have suggested that the rocks in the Rocky Mountains were formed much before these mountains began to be raised by the tectonic forces. And the rock that forms the core of the North American continent, Precambrian metamorphic rock, is believed to be billions of years old.
At the time of formation, the geography of Rockies was like the Tibet of today – a high plateau, 6,000 meters or about 20,000 ft high. However, since then, erosion by waters and glaciers has stripped away their altitude, forming the current landscape of the Rockies.
Today, the Rocky Mountains are among the major mountain ranges in the world, stretching more than 3,000 miles from the northernmost part of British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico to south-western United States and spread across regions of Montana, north-eastern & south-eastern Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona.
Including at least 100 different ranges, Rocky Mountains are divided into four broad groups: The Rocky Mountains include at least 100 separate ranges, which are generally divided into four broad groupings: the Canadian Rockies and Northern Rockies, the Middle Rockies, the Southern Rockies, and the Colorado Plateau.
The Rocky Mountain range’s highest peak in Central North America, Mount Elbert, is located in Colorado, with an altitude of 14,440 ft. And its highest peak in the Canadian Rocky Region of British Columbia is Mount Robson with an altitude of 12,972 ft.
After the last great ice age, the Rocky Mountains first became home to a few indigenous people like Apache, Bannock, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow Nation, Flatheads, Sioux, Ute, Kutenai (Ktunaxa in Canada), Sekani, and many others.
In 1793, Sir Alexander McKenzie became the first European to cross the Rocky Mountains. Completing the first recorded transcontinental crossing of the region, he found the upper reaches of Fraser River and reached the pacific coast, which is Canada of today.
Generally, the regions surrounding the Rocky Mountains have mild summers and cold winters with a lot of precipitation. However, as the altitude increases, the weather and climate can change rather swiftly and become unpredictable, as is the case with other highland climates.
With an average of just four people per square kilometres and a few cities with over 50,000 people, the human inhabitation is not very dense when compared to the neighbouring states of each region. However, the whole region is big tourist attraction and thousands visit from across the world.
There are a several national parks surrounding the vast expanse of Rocky Mountain range. Two of the most popular ones being the Yellowstone National Park, which was established as the world’s first national park, and Rocky Mountain National Park.
Within these national parks in the Rocky Mountain ranges, they are a home to a great deal of well known animal species such as as elk, moose, mule and white-tailed deer, pronghorns, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, black bears, grizzly bears, coyotes, lynxes, and wolverines, and also some rather unknown species. The region is also home to a vast variety of floral and bird life.
With so much to offer, people from across the world visit the popular destinations around the Rockies for recreational activities like hiking, trekking, camping, hunting, fishing, skiing, biking, snowboarding, and bunch of other sports.
Apart from being a major tourist attraction, Rocky Mountains strengthen the backbone of North American economy as the surrounding regions are known to possess significant deposits of minerals such as copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, silver, tungsten, and zinc. Major amounts of coal, natural gas, oil shale, and petroleum are also known to be found in the Wyoming Basin.

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