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Geography of New York (state)

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Geography of New York (state)

The geography of New York varies widely across the state. Most of New York is dominated by farms, forests, rivers, mountains, and lakes. New York's Adirondack Park is larger than any U.S. National Park in the contiguous United States. Niagara Falls, on the Niagara River as it flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, is a popular attraction. The Hudson River begins near Lake Tear of the Clouds and flows south through the eastern part of the state without draining lakes George or Champlain. Lake George empties at its north end into Lake Champlain, whose northern end extends into Canada, where it drains into the Richelieu River and then the St. Lawrence. Four of New York City's five boroughs are on the three islands at the mouth of the Hudson River: Manhattan Island, Staten Island, and Brooklyn and Queens on Long Island.

"Upstate" is a common term for New York counties north of suburban Westchester, Rockland and Dutchess counties. Upstate New York typically includes the Catskill Mountains or areas North of the Catskill Mountains, the Capital District, The Adirondacks, the Erie Canal, Lake Champlain, Otsego Lake, Oneida Lake; rivers such as the Delaware, Genesee, Mohawk, and Susquehanna. The highest elevation in New York is Mount Marcy of the Adirondack Mountains. New York is the 27th-largest state.

New York is located in the northeastern United States, in the Mid-Atlantic Census Bureau division. New York covers an area of 54,556 square miles (141,299 km2) making it the 27th largest state by total area (but 30th by land area). The state borders six U.S. states: Pennsylvania to the west, New Jersey and Connecticut to the south, Rhode Island (across Long Island Sound), Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. New York also borders the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec to the north. Additionally, New York touches the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and two of the Great Lakes: Lake Erie to the west and Lake Ontario to the northwest.

The current geological makeup of New York State is the result of the orogenous event that formed the Appalachians, followed by millions of years of erosion and sediment deposition. The most recent major geologic force that shaped New York's landscape into its current form was the movement of a glacier during the late Pleistocene, which began to recede from the region around 18,000 years ago, leaving behind many characteristic landforms, such as the Hudson River, the Finger Lakes, and the Helderberg Escarpment.

New York is part of the Marcellus Shale, a gas-rich rock formation which also extends across Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

New York lies upon the portion of the Appalachian Mountains where the mountains generally assume the character of hills and finally sink to a level of the lowlands that surround the great depression filled by Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. Three distinct mountain masses can be identified in the state. The most easterly of these ranges—a continuation of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia—enters the state from New Jersey and extends northeast through Rockland and Orange counties to the Hudson River, continuing on the east side of that river as the highlands of Putnam and Dutchess counties. A northerly extension of the same range passes into the Green Mountains of western Massachusetts and Vermont. This range is known in New York as the Hudson Highlands. The highest peaks are 1,000 to 1,700 feet (300 to 520 m) above sea level. The rocks that compose these mountains are principally primitive or igneous, and the mountains themselves are rough, rocky, precipitous, and unfit for cultivation.

The second series of mountains enters the state from Pennsylvania and extends northeast through Sullivan, Ulster, and Greene counties, terminating and culminating in the Catskill Mountains west of the Hudson River. The highest peaks are 3,000 to 4,200 feet (910 to 1,280 m) above sea level. The Shawangunk Mountains, a high and continuous ridge extending between Sullivan and Orange counties and into the southern part of Ulster County, is the extreme eastern range of this series. The Helderberg and Hellibark Mountains are spurs extending north from the main range into Albany and Schoharie counties. This whole mountain system is principally composed of rocks of the New York system above the Medina sandstone. The summits are generally crowned with red sandstone and with the conglomerate of the coal measures. The declivities are steep and rocky, and a large share of the surface is too rough for cultivation.

The third mountainous region, occupying the northeast part of the state, is known as the Adirondack Mountains. The region is bounded to the south by the Mohawk River, south of which the highlands become part of the Allegheny Plateau, in the form of broad, irregular hills, broken by the deep ravines of streams. The valley of the Mohawk separates the Allegheny Plateau to the south from the highlands leading to the Adirondacks to the north, reaching its narrowest point in the neighborhood of Little Falls, the Noses, and other places. North of the Mohawk the highlands extend northeast in several distinct ranges, all terminating upon Lake Champlain. The culminating point of the whole system, and the highest mountain in the state, is Mount Marcy, standing 5,344 feet (1,629 m) above sea level. The rocks of all this region are principally of igneous origin, and the mountains are usually wild, rugged, and rocky. A large share of the surface is entirely unfit for cultivation, but the region is rich in minerals, and especially in an excellent variety of iron ore.

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