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What is a continental divide in the Rocky Mountains?

I think it is something like that on the west of the continental divide line the water flows into the pacific, but does the water flow into the Mississippi, gulf of Mexico, or Atlantic Ocean on the east side of the continental divide.

Public Comments

1. That's pretty much it. On one side of a continental divide the rivers flow into one sea, on the other side they flow into another. With the Rocky Mountains, all the rivers to the west of the divide flow into the Pacific either directly or indirectly (some are tributaries of other rivers, or flow into the Gulf of California). To the east of the divide, they all flow directly or indirectly into the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico (mostly indirectly, through the Great lakes, or as tributaries of big rivers like the Mississippi and Rio Grande). A lot of the central United States is actually one huge drainage basin, with a lot of the rivers to the east of the rockies being part of the Mississippi system. You can actually extend the continental divide even further - if you look at a map, you'll see that the South American Andes are pretty much an extension of the same mountain chain, and they do the same thing. All the rivers to the west of the Andes flow into the Pacific; those in the east flow into the Atlantic, mostly through one of the big river systems (the Amazon, the Orinoco, or the Paraña)