South Mountain

South Mountain or South Mountains may refer to:

Canada

United States

Landforms

Parks

Other

South Mountain Park

South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona, is the largest municipal park in the United States, one of the largest urban parks in North America and in the world. It has been designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride.

Geography and Ecology

South Mountain Park preserves in a natural state a mountainous area of 16,283 acres (65.89 km²) or approximately 25.5 sq mi (66 km²) of native desert vegetation. Originally called Phoenix Mountain Park, it was formed in 1924 when President Calvin Coolidge sold its initial 13,000 acres (53 km²) to the city of Phoenix for $17,000. It has since been expanded through bond programs during the 1970s into the early 1980s. It is located south of central Phoenix, hence the name. Since the naming, suburban growth has nearly surrounded the park. Ahwatukee now borders to the south and Laveen to the west.

South Mountain was originally known as the Salt River Mountains. The original mountain park committee consisted of J.C. Dobbins, chairman of the Phoenix city planning commission, Mrs. John Hampton, and H.B. Wilkinson. Dobbins Road, named after J.C. Dobbins, runs east and west just north of the park.

Mountain Park

Mountain Park may refer to:

Places

United States

Canada

Schools

Mountain

A mountain is a large landform that stretches above the surrounding land in a limited area, usually in the form of a peak. A mountain is generally steeper than a hill. Mountains are formed through tectonic forces or volcanism. These forces can locally raise the surface of the earth. Mountains erode slowly through the action of rivers, weather conditions, and glaciers. A few mountains are isolated summits, but most occur in huge mountain ranges.

High elevations on mountains produce colder climates than at sea level. These colder climates strongly affect the ecosystems of mountains: different elevations have different plants and animals. Because of the less hospitable terrain and climate, mountains tend to be used less for agriculture and more for resource extraction and recreation, such as mountain climbing.

The highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Asia, whose summit is 8,850 m (29,035 ft) above mean sea level. The highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars at 21,171 m (69,459 ft).

South

South is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. It is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. South is the polar opposite of north and is perpendicular to east and west.

Etymology

The word south comes from Old English sūþ, from earlier Proto-Germanic *sunþaz ("south"), possibly related to the same Proto-Indo-European root that the word sun derived from.

Navigation

By convention, the bottom side of a map is south, although reversed maps exist that defy this convention. To go south using a compass for navigation, set a bearing or azimuth of 180°. Alternatively, in the Northern Hemisphere outside the tropics, the Sun will be roughly in the south at midday.

South Pole

True south is the direction towards the southern end of the axis about which the earth rotates, called the South Pole. The South Pole is located in Antarctica. Magnetic south is the direction towards the south magnetic pole, some distance away from the south geographic pole.

Roald Amundsen, from Norway, was the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911, after Ernest Shackleton from the UK was forced to turn back some distance short.