Fault

Compression of land masses along faults has built some of the great mountain ranges of the world. Mountain-building fault movements are extremely slow, but, over a long time, they can cause displacements of thousands of feet (meters). Examples of mountain ranges that have been raised by cumulative lifting along faults are the Wasatch Range in Utah, the uplifting of layer upon layer of sedimentary rocks that form the eastern front of The San Andreas fault extends almost the full length of California. The landscape consists of pressure ridges formed by hundreds of fault movements. JLM Visuals. Reproduced by permission.
the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Montana, the large thrust faults that formed the Ridge and Valley Province of the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia and Tennessee, and the Himalayas (including Mount Everest and several of the other tallest mountains in the world) that are continuing to be pushed upward as the tectonic plate bearing the Indian Subcontinent collides with the Eurasian plate. Tension along smaller faults has created the mountain ranges that bracket the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah. These mountains may have been formed by the hanging walls of the many local faults that slid downward by thousands of feet (meters) until they became valley floors.