Geography of Massachusetts - Physical Geography

Physical Geography

Massachusetts extends from the mountains of the Appalachian system in the west to the sandy beaches and rocky shorelines of the Atlantic coast. The entire state was covered in ice during the Wisconsin glaciation, which shaped today’s landscape. Much of the state remains covered in glacial till and dotted with typical glacial features, such as kettle ponds, drumlins, eskers, and moraines. Apart from a few alluvial floodplains, soils tend to be rocky, acidic, and not very fertile.

Part of the state is uplands of resistant metamorphic rock that were scraped by Pleistocene glaciers that deposited moraines and outwash on a large, sandy, arm-shaped peninsula called Cape Cod and the islands Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket to the south of Cape Cod. Upland elevations increase dramatically in Western Massachusetts. These uplands are interrupted by the downfaulted southern Pioneer Valley along the Connecticut River and further west by the Housatonic Valley separating the Berkshire Hills from the Taconic Range along the western border with New York. The highest peak in the state is Mount Greylock at 3,491 feet (1,064 m) near the northwest corner.