Three major mountain ranges

• Appalachian Mountains

• Coastal Ranges

• Sierra Nevada

The Appalachian Mountains are mostly located in the United States but extends into southeastern Canada, forming a zone from 100 to 300 mi (160 to 480 km) wide, running from the island of Newfoundland 1,500 mi (2,400 km) south-westward to Central Alabama in the United States. The system is divided into a series of ranges, with the individual mountains averaging around 3,000 ft (910 m). The highest of the group is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina at 6,684 feet (2,037 m), which is the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi River.

The term Appalachian refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range. Most broadly, it refers to the entire mountain range with its surrounding hills and the dissected plateau region. However, the term is often used more restrictively to refer to regions in the central and southern Appalachian Mountains, usually including areas in the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and North Carolina, as well as sometimes extending as far south as northern Georgia and western South Carolina, as far north as Pennsylvania and southern Ohio.

The Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas and Oklahoma were originally part of the Appalachians as well, but became disconnected through geologic history.

The Coast Mountains are a major mountain range, in the Pacific Coast Ranges, of western North America, extending from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Columbia. They are so-named because of their proximity to the sea coast, and are often referred to as the Coast Range. It includes volcanic and non-volcanic mountains and the huge icefields of the Pacific and Boundary Ranges, and the northern end of the notable volcanic system known as the Cascade Volcanoes. The Coast Mountains are part of a larger mountain system called the Pacific Coast Ranges or the Pacific Mountain System, which includes the Cascade Range, the Insular Mountains, the Oregon and California Coast Ranges and the Saint Elias and Chugach Mountains.

The Coast Mountains are approximately 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) long and average 300 kilometres (190 mi) in width. Its southern and southeastern boundaries are surrounded by the Fraser River and the Interior Plateau while its far northwestern edge is delimited by the Kelsall and Tatshenshini Rivers at the north end of the Alaska Panhandle, beyond which are the Saint Elias Mountains, and by Champagne Pass in the Yukon Territory. Covered in dense temperate rainforest on its western exposures, the range rises to heavily glaciated peaks, including the largest temperate-latitude icefields in the world. It then tapers to the dry Interior Plateau on its eastern flanks, or to the subarctic boreal forest of the Skeena Mountains and Stikine Plateau.

The Coast Mountains are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean. It contains some of British Columbia's highest mountains. Mount Waddington, northeast of the head of Knight Inlet with an elevation of 4,019 metres (13,186 ft), is the highest mountain of the Coast Mountains and the highest that lies entirely within British Columbia.