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:
“It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow born out of that Alpine district; that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“Have We not made the earth as a cradle and the mountains as pegs? And We created you in pairs, and We appointed your sleep for a rest; and We appointed night for a garment, and We appointed day for a livelihood. And We have built above you seven strong ones, and We appointed a blazing lamp and have sent down out of the rain-clouds water cascading that We may bring forth thereby grain and plants, and gardens luxuriant.”
—Qur’An. “The Tiding,” 78:6-16, trans. by Arthur J. Arberry (1955)