About 400 miles · California (edge of Nevada) · highest Mount Whitney, 14,505 ft
Sierra Nevada map
The Sierra Nevada runs about 400 miles down eastern California from Lassen Peak to the Tehachapi Pass. Mount Whitney, 14,505 ft, is the highest point in the contiguous United States.
Where the Sierra is
The Sierra Nevada is a single tilted block of granite about 400 miles long and 50 to 80 miles wide along the eastern side of California. Its gentle western slope rises from the Central Valley; its eastern face drops abruptly to the Owens Valley and the Great Basin, 10,000 ft in a few miles at Lone Pine. The crest lies close to the Nevada border, and the Carson Range around Lake Tahoe spills into Nevada. North of Lake Almanor the Sierra gives way to the volcanic Cascades; at Tehachapi Pass it meets the Transverse Ranges.
Key measurements
- Highest peak: Mount Whitney, 14,505 ft, the highest point in the 48 contiguous states. Badwater Basin in Death Valley, 282 ft below sea level, is only about 85 miles away.
- Lake Tahoe: 191 square miles, 1,645 ft deep (second deepest in the US), 6,225 ft above sea level, split by the California–Nevada line.
- Highest pass: Tioga Pass, 9,943 ft, the eastern entrance to Yosemite, closed by snow for about half the year.
- Donner Pass, 7,056 ft, carries Interstate 80 and the transcontinental railroad.
- Yosemite Falls drops 2,425 ft in three steps; Yosemite Valley's floor is at about 4,000 ft.
- Giant sequoias, the largest trees on earth by volume, grow only on the western slope between about 5,000 and 7,000 ft.
National parks
Yosemite (1890), Sequoia (1890) and Kings Canyon (1940) are all in the southern and central Sierra. Devils Postpile National Monument and the Ansel Adams, John Muir and Desolation wildernesses cover much of the rest of the crest. The John Muir Trail runs 211 miles from Yosemite Valley to Whitney without crossing a road.
Cities near the range
No large city is inside the Sierra. Sacramento and Fresno sit in the Central Valley on the west; Reno and Carson City, Nevada, sit at the eastern foot. South Lake Tahoe and Truckee are the largest mountain towns; Bishop and Mammoth Lakes serve the east side. San Francisco and San Jose are about 150 miles west.
How the range shaped the map
Gold from the Sierra's western foothills, discovered at Sutter's Mill on the American River in January 1848, brought the population that made California a state in 1850. The California–Nevada border was drawn as two straight lines meeting in Lake Tahoe, because in 1850 nobody had surveyed the range; the border therefore cuts across the mountains rather than following the crest. The Sierra is also the reason California's rivers flow west: the Sacramento, San Joaquin, American, Feather, Kings and Kern all rise here and drain to San Francisco Bay, while the eastern streams (Truckee, Carson, Walker, Owens) end in Great Basin lakes or the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
Related maps
- Mojave Desert — southeast of the range, in its rain shadow.
- Cascade Range — the volcanic continuation to the north.
- Highest point in each state · US mountain ranges.
- California map · Nevada map · All geography maps.