When tectonic plates smash into each other, they push the Earth’s crust higher and higher, forming mountains. The Rocky Mountains formed 80 million to 55 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny , in which a number of plates began sliding underneath the North American plate The angle of subduction was shallow, resulting in a broad belt of mountains running down western North America.
By the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 , which established the 49th parallel north as the international boundary west from Lake of the Woods to the “Stony Mountains”; 25 the UK and the USA agreed to what has since been described as “joint occupancy” of lands further west to the Pacific Ocean Resolution of the territorial and treaty issues, the Oregon dispute , was deferred until a later time.
5 Similarly, in the wake of Mackenzie’s 1793 expedition, fur trading posts were established west of the Northern …