The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (French: les Appalaches) are a range of mountains in eastern North America.

The Appalachians, mostly contiguous for over 2,200 miles in length, rise in the states of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine in the United States and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Quebec

The Appalachian Mountains are the oldest mountains in the world, with possibly one exception, the Ural Mountains in eastern Europe which are as equally as old. So, for millennia these mountains have been worn down by the effects of rain and wind, causing the highest peaks to be reduced to only as high as just over 6000 feet in several places, with the high point on the Appalachian Trail of 6643 feet at Clingmans Dome in the Smoky Mountains on the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

Too, in modern time as well as in pre-historic times, man has been traversing and living in most all of these mountains.

The highest elevation in the Appalachians is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina(6684 feet, 2037 m). Other notable peaks include: Mount Craig (6647 feet), Clingmans Dome (6643 feet), Mount Guyot (6621 feet), Black Mountain (6617 feet), Balsom Cone (6611 feet), Mount le Conte (6594 feet), Mount Gibbes (6571 feet), Potato Hill (6475 feet), Mount Chapman (6417 feet), Richand Balsam (6411 feet), Waterrock Knob (6293 feet), Mount Washington (6289 feet), and never to be overlooked is Katahdin (5268 feet) in northern Maine and the Journey to Katahdin story by Tommy Michel.

The most well know subranges of the Appalachian Mountains include the Adirondack Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains, Great Smoky Mountains, Green Mountains, and White Mountains.

Besides the above larger mountain ranges, there are smaller Appalachian mountain ranges including the: Alleghenny (PA), Berkshires (CT and MA) Black (NC), Brushy (NC), Catskill (NY), Chic-Chocs (Quebec) Cumberla,nd (TN), Iron (TN, VA), Kittatinny (NJ), Mahoosucs (ME), Poconos (PA), Saluda (NC and SC), Taconic (NY) and others.

The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago in the early Paleozoic era, during the Ordovician Period. Along with the Ural Mountains in western Russia, the Appalachians are the oldest mountains on Earth. It is believed that they once reached elevations similar to those of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains before experiencing natural erosion.