Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Rocky Mountains stretch 3,000 miles in a straight-line distance, from the northernmost part of Western Canada to New Mexico in the Southwestern United States. They are the largest mountain system in North America and form the easternmost portion of the North American Cordillera.
Mount Elbert in Colorado is the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains at 14,440 feet above sea level. Mount Robson in British Columbia, at 12,972 feet, is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies.
The current Rocky Mountains arose during the Laramide orogeny, between 80 million and 55 million years ago, as plates slid underneath the North American plate at a shallow angle. The shallow subduction of the Farallon Plate moved mountain building far inland, piling sheets of crust on top of each other.
Sir Alexander Mackenzie became the first European to cross the Rocky Mountains in 1793. He reached the Pacific coast of what is now Canada on July 20 of that year at Bella Coola, completing the first recorded transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico.
The name Rocky Mountains is a calque of an Algonquian name, specifically the Plains Cree asiniwaciy, which literally means rocky mountain or alp. Its French form, montagnes de Roche, was first attested in Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre's journal in 1752.
The Rocky Mountains contain significant deposits of copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, silver, tungsten, and zinc, while the Wyoming Basin holds coal, natural gas, oil shale, and petroleum. The Climax mine near Leadville, Colorado, was once the largest producer of molybdenum in the world and employed over 3,000 workers.
In the United States the Rocky Mountains include Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, and Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. In Canada the range contains Banff, Jasper, Kootenay, Waterton Lakes, and Yoho National Parks, with Yellowstone established in 1872 as the world's first national park.