Allegheny Front

Allegheny Front
Allegheny Front
	Dans Mountain, part of the Allegheny Front in Maryland
Highest point
Peak	Mount Porte Crayon, Randolph/Pendleton Co. border, West Virginia
Elevation	4,774 ft (1,455 m)
Coordinates	38°55′44″N 79°27′22″W / 38.92889°N 79.45611°W
Geography
	The Allegheny Front is west of the Cumberland Valley and is part of the Appalachian escarpment extending between the Helderberg Escarpment in New York to Walden Ridge in Tennessee.
Country	United States
States	Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia
Range coordinates	39°04′23″N 79°17′53″W / 39.07306°N 79.29806°W
Parent range	Allegheny Mountains of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians
Geology
Orogeny	Alleghenian orogeny

The Allegheny Front is the major southeast- or east-facing escarpment in the Allegheny Mountains in southern Pennsylvania, western Maryland, eastern West Virginia, and western Virginia. The Allegheny Front forms the boundary between the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians to its east and the Appalachian Plateau (locally called the Allegheny Plateau) to its west. The Front is closely associated with the Appalachian Mountains' Eastern Continental Divide, which in this area divides the waters of the Ohio/Mississippi river system, flowing to the Gulf of Mexico, from rivers flowing into Chesapeake Bay and from there into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Allegheny Front and the Eastern Continental Divide do not always coincide; for example, the North Branch of the Potomac River begins well west of the Front, at the Fairfax Stone near the southwestern tip of Maryland, about 10 miles (16 km) and across the actual divide from the headwaters of the Youghiogheny River draining northwards into the Monongahela and Ohio rivers.

The Allegheny Front is one of the windiest spots east of the Mississippi, leading to the recent establishment of wind farming there.^{[citation needed]}