When people ask where the Appalachian Mountains are, they are really asking where one of North America’s oldest backbones runs beneath maps and highways and river valleys. The Appalachians are not a single peak or a single park. They are a long, folded highland system that shadows the eastern side of the continent from the Canadian Atlantic almost to the Gulf of Mexico.
Geographers usually begin the story in the northeast. From the island of Newfoundland and the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec, Appalachian ridges and highlands run southwest through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and along the Atlantic edge of Canada. Natural Resources Canada groups these uplands as one of the country’s main physiographic regions, the Appalachian Uplands, which include southern Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland.
From there the mountains cross an international border but keep the same general line. In the United States, this highland belt becomes the Appalachian Highlands, one of the federal government’s eight major physiographic divisions. The mountains continue southwest through New England, the Mid Atlantic, and the South, before finally trailing off in central Alabama. Modern reference works describe the range as nearly two thousand miles long, extending from Newfoundland and Labrador in the north to Alabama in the south.
Put in simpler terms, the Appalachians are the long band of mountains and plateaus that stand between the Atlantic Coastal Plain on one side and the broad interior lowlands and basins of the continent on the other. They are the hills behind the cities, the ridges that catch the first light over the Atlantic seaboard, and the high ground that once made a natural barrier for settlers moving west from the original colonies.
The Canadian Reach
On the Canadian side, the Appalachians form the rough, sea facing rim of the Atlantic provinces. In Quebec they appear as the Notre Dame and Mégantic Mountains, a province of the larger Appalachian division that runs along the south side of the St. Lawrence River and reaches into the Gaspé. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island carry their own low mountains, uplands, and coastal plains that geologists group within the same Appalachian family.
This northern reach is lower than the dramatic western ranges of the continent, but it holds long plateaus, dissected highlands, and cliffs that drop toward the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. Federal mapping in Canada treats this entire zone as one of the country’s key physiographic regions, located along the eastern margin of the Canadian Shield and forming a kind of coastal front of folded and eroded rock.
The United States Highlands
South of the border the same mountain system bends through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and western Massachusetts and Connecticut. Here it appears in familiar names like the Longfellow Mountains, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, and the Berkshires. Farther southwest, Appalachian ridges flank the Hudson River valley, cross Pennsylvania and Maryland, and run down the spine of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas before they loosen into foothills in Georgia and Alabama.
American geologists group this great upland into several provinces. The Blue Ridge holds some of the highest peaks, including Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, the tallest summit east of the Mississippi River. To the northwest lie the folded Valley and Ridge belt and the Appalachian Plateau, a broad high tableland that includes the Allegheny and Cumberland plateaus and much of the central Appalachian coalfields. Taken together, these provinces form a continuous highland corridor from New York to Alabama.
The mountains directly touch or influence at least a dozen U.S. states. Maps and physiographic descriptions typically include Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, with parts of Ohio and Mississippi often linked through the plateau and basin.
Between Coastal Plain And Interior
To understand where the Appalachians are located, it helps to picture what lies on either side. On the east, from Newfoundland down to Florida, runs a generally low, flat to rolling Atlantic Coastal Plain. On the west, behind the mountains, lie the Interior Lowlands, basins, and plateaus that stretch toward the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes.
The Appalachians rise between these two zones and act as a dividing wall of older, worn down rock. Rivers like the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, and James cut through the ridges on their way from interior uplands to the Atlantic, marking some of the most important historic passages across the mountains. Wherever travelers have tried to move from the eastern coast into the interior of North America, they have had to find a gap, a river valley, or a long, sloping corridor through this high country.
A Chain Of Ridges, Valleys, And Plateaus
Seen on a map, the Appalachians look like a single belt. On the ground they are a chain of overlapping landscapes. Northern sections in Canada and New England show rugged coastal headlands, rounded highlands, and isolated massifs like the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Central sections in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia present long, parallel ridges separated by narrow valleys and flanked by the broad Appalachian Plateaus to the west. Southern sections in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and northern Georgia give way to the high Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains, where coves and hollows cut deeply into older rock and the ridgelines hold some of the highest elevations in the entire system.
All of these pieces are part of the same story. They represent old mountain building and long erosion, lifted and worn and lifted again over hundreds of millions of years. The modern range is lower than younger systems like the Rockies, but its long run across climate zones and its complex physiographic structure make it one of the most varied mountain regions on the continent.
Answering The Question
So where are the Appalachian Mountains located in North America?
They occupy a long strip along the continent’s eastern margin. They run from the island of Newfoundland and the Atlantic provinces of Canada, through Quebec’s Notre Dame and Mégantic highlands, across New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and then continue through New England, the Mid Atlantic, and the southern United States to central Alabama. Throughout that distance they stand between the Atlantic Coastal Plain on one side and the interior lowlands and basins on the other, forming a two thousand mile spine of highlands that has shaped climate, travel, settlement, and culture on both sides of the border.
For people in the Appalachian region, those mountains are more than lines on a map. They are the ridges outside the window, the watersheds that feed local creeks and rivers, and the backdrop for stories that stretch from fishing villages on the Gulf of St. Lawrence to coal camps in eastern Kentucky and small farms in northern Alabama. But all of those local places share the same answer. They belong to the long eastern highlands that geologists, mapmakers, and residents alike call the Appalachian Mountains.