United States Physical Map
A free printable physical map of the United States, with elevation shown in color and shaded relief. The labeled version names the mountain ranges, deserts, plains, rivers, seas and highest peaks. The blank version leaves them off for students to fill in.
Highest Point
Denali, Alaska
20,310 ft
Lowest Point
Death Valley, California
282 ft below sea level
Choose your version
Labeled or blank.
Both are free PDFs sized for US Letter paper.
Labeled
Ranges, deserts, plains, rivers, lakes, seas and the highest peaks, all named. Use it as a reference or an answer key.
downloadLabeled PDF
Blank
The same terrain with no names and a name line at the top, for students to label the features themselves.
downloadBlank PDFThe physical geography of the United States
The United States rises from low coastal plains along the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico to the old, worn Appalachian Mountains. West of them the land drops to the Central Lowlands and the valley of the Mississippi River, then climbs gradually across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains. Between the Rockies and the Pacific ranges lie high plateaus and the dry Great Basin. The Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range run near the west coast. Alaska holds Denali, the highest peak in North America, and Hawaii is a chain of volcanic islands.
Major rivers
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Ohio
- Colorado
- Columbia
- Rio Grande
- Arkansas
- Snake
Find it on the map
- The Great Plains rising steadily toward the Rocky Mountains
- The Appalachians running from Alabama toward Maine
- The five Great Lakes along the northern border
Built from real data, not stock images.
The terrain is drawn from a global elevation model (Mapzen terrain tiles, built from NASA SRTM and other public surveys). Coastlines, rivers, lakes and feature names come from Natural Earth. All eight of our US, continent and world physical maps use the same elevation colors, so they can be compared with each other.
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