Mountains
Arizona is a fairly mountainous and rugged state, and is home to the world's largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest. Many mountain ranges exceed 9,000 feet (2,700 m) in elevation, and some can hold snow all summer.
Arizona has 194 named mountain ranges. The highest are along the southwest margin of the Colorado Plateau, including the volcanic San Francisco Peaks just north of Flagstaff and the White Mountains of the Mogollon Rim. The Basin and Range region of southern and western Arizona has many rugged ranges existing as sky islands in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Arizona
Famous quotes containing the word mountains:
“The supreme, the merciless, the destroyer of opposition, the exalted King, the shepherd, the protector of the quarters of the world, the King the word of whose mouth destroys mountains and seas, who by his lordly attack has forced mighty and merciless Kings from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same to acknowledge one supremacy.”
—Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–59 B.C.)
“The mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Fogs and clouds which conceal the overshadowing mountains lend the breadth of the plains to mountain vales. Even the small-featured country acquires some grandeur in stormy weather when clouds are seen drifting between the beholder and the neighboring hills.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)