>>3240954Arizona has 3,900+ individual mountain ranges with over 8,000 individual peaks, one of the highest counts in the lower 48. To define range you first have to define peaks, in the US mountaineering community a mountain peak has at least 91 meters (300ft) of prominence, and can have less than 100 meters isolation so long as it meets the prominence standard. Ranges contain many peaks, and ranges are separated from other ranges by either valleys or canyons where the average elevation falls below the average elevation of the mountain range. For example I'll show you a picture of a 2390m+ mountain I often hike that has 4 distinct peaks within one range, the highest peak has 1250m of prominence, while the lowest peak has 800m of prominence, the average elevation of the whole range (the mountainous terrain, not the valleys around it) is 1600m, while the valleys around this mountain average 900-1000m elevation, a mountain range will always be defined as a region of mountainous terrain protruding from surrounding lower elevation terrain, they just happen very very frequently in the western US, and western North America in general, the Rockies (which don't occur in AZ) stretch from New Mexico all the way to south east Alaska and western Canada and it has thousands of named sub ranges within it. You also have to consider that North America is a very large continent, and many US states, specifically western US states, are as large as or larger than many individual nations.
