The American cordillera consists of an essentially continuous sequence of mountain ranges that form the western "backbone" of North America, Central America and South America. From north to south, this sequence of overlapping and parallel ranges begins with the Alaska Range and the Brooks Range in Alaska and run through the Yukon into British Columbia. The main belt of the Rocky Mountains along with the parallel Coast Ranges of mountains and islands continue through British Columbia and Vancouver Island. In the United States, the Cordillera branches to include the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascades and Coast ranges of Washington, Oregon, and California. In Mexico, the Cordillera continues through the Sierra Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre Oriental, as well as the backbone mountains of the Baja California peninsula.

The Cordillera from Mexico northwards is also called the Western Cordillera in the United States and the Pacific Cordillera in Canada.

The Cordillera continues on through the mountain ranges of Central America in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, and becomes the Andes Mountains of South America. The Andes with their parallel chains and the island chains off the coast of Chile continue through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile to the very tip of South America at Tierra del Fuego. In addition, the range can possibly be followed through the arcuate South Georgia Ridge across the Southern Ocean to the mountains of Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The Cordillera are the eastern half of the Pacific Ring of Fire, which continues around the Pacific Ocean via Kamchatka and Japan to Indonesia and Polynesia.

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