The Rocky Mountains, or Rockies, is the largest mountain system in North America. The area stretches 3,000 miles in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada down to New Mexico in the southwestern United States.
Its southernmost point is near the Albuquerque area adjacent to the Rio Grande rift and north of the Sandia–Manzano Mountain Range. Being the easternmost portion of the North American Cordillera, the Rockies are distinct from the tectonically younger Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada, which both lie farther to its west.
Human population is not very dense in the Rockies, with an average of four people per square kilometer and few cities with over 50,000 people. However, the population did grow rapidly in the Rocky Mountain states between 1950 and 1990. The forty-year statewide increases in population range from 35% in Montana to about 150% in Utah and Colorado. The populations of several mountain towns and communities doubled in the forty years from 1972 through 2012.
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