Physical map of the United States
Physical map of the United States shows the shape of the land with shaded relief and colors for elevation. Rivers and lakes are drawn in blue, and dashed lines show country borders. Download the labeled map or use the version without names as a worksheet.
How to read this map
Named features on this map include Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, Great Basin, Appalachian Mountains, Cascade Range, Atlantic coastal plain, Central Lowlands, Pacific Coast Ranges, Colorado Plateau, Columbia Plateau, Allegheny Plateau, Sonoran Desert, Great Salt Lake Desert, Ozarks, Edwards Plateau, Laurentian Upland, Front Range, Adirondack Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains, Ouachita Mountains, Mount Whitney, Mount Katahdin, Grand Teton. The terrain colors help locate these features within the surrounding lowlands, plateaus and mountain belts.
The mapped river network includes Snake, Columbia, Rio Grande, Arkansas, Mississippi, Colorado, Sacramento, Tennessee. Only selected rivers are labeled at this scale; a missing label does not mean that a river is absent.
Greens show lower elevations; tan and brown show higher land, with pale tones toward the highest terrain. Shadows emphasize the slopes. Vertical relief is exaggerated to make landforms easier to read, so the map is not a slope survey. Blue tones distinguish seas from land; the legend is a guide to land elevation, not a chart of water depth.
The relief uses Terrain Tiles, a composite of SRTM, GMTED2010 and ETOPO1 elevation data distributed through the AWS Open Data program. Boundaries, rivers, lakes and feature names come from Natural Earth. These are small-scale educational maps rather than navigation or engineering surveys.
Blank physical map
The blank version keeps the mapped features and removes the place labels. Download it for a geography worksheet or practice identifying the features.
Features and names
| Reference | Name or description |
|---|---|
| Named physical feature | Rocky Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Great Plains |
| Named physical feature | Great Basin |
| Named physical feature | Appalachian Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Cascade Range |
| Named physical feature | Atlantic coastal plain |
| Named physical feature | Central Lowlands |
| Named physical feature | Pacific Coast Ranges |
| Named physical feature | Colorado Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Columbia Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Allegheny Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Sonoran Desert |
| Named physical feature | Great Salt Lake Desert |
| Named physical feature | Ozarks |
| Named physical feature | Edwards Plateau |
| Named physical feature | Laurentian Upland |
| Named physical feature | Front Range |
| Named physical feature | Adirondack Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Blue Ridge Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Ouachita Mountains |
| Named physical feature | Mount Whitney |
| Named physical feature | Mount Katahdin |
| Named physical feature | Grand Teton |
Data sources and license
- Natural Earth (public-domain geography): Public domain.
- Terrain Tiles / Mapzen (SRTM, GMTED2010, ETOPO1): Open elevation data; source attribution retained.
Map design and rendered images: Atlas of Maps, CC BY 4.0. Source databases retain their own licenses; the map license does not replace them.
Also see the political map of United States, with cities, internal divisions, a location map and printable outline maps.
Frequently asked questions
What does a physical map show?
A physical map shows landforms and water: mountains, plateaus, lowlands, rivers, lakes and seas. This map uses elevation colors and hill shading instead of coloring each country separately.
Can I download physical map of the united states without labels?
Yes. The blank relief map retains the terrain, rivers and outlines but removes place names. Both versions are available as PNG and PDF; the PDF uses A4 paper and can be scaled to US Letter.
Use this map
You can download, print and share this map for free, in class, in school projects, in presentations and on websites, as long as you credit the source: Physical map of the United States · Atlas of Maps (atlasofmaps.com), license CC BY 4.0.