Us Sierra Nevada: Mountain range in the Western United States
The Sierra Nevada (Spanish for Snowy Range) is a mountain range that is almost entirely in the eastern part of California.
- For the mountain range in Spain see Sierra Nevada (Spain)
The range started to uplift less than five million years ago.
The Sierra Nevada stretches 400 miles (650 km), from North to South. It is bounded on the West by California's Central Valley, and on the East by the Great Basin.
Uplift continues, and ground slips make spectacular fault escarpments along the eastern edge of the southern Sierra. The Sierra Nevada is part of the American Cordillera, an almost continuous chain of mountain ranges which make up the western "backbone" of the Americas.
The Sierra Nevada has played an important role in the history of California and the United States. The California Gold Rush occurred in the western foothills from 1848 through 1855.
Other websites
References
This short article about a place or feature in the United States can be made longer. You can help Wikipedia by adding to it.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Sierra Nevada (US), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.