Mount Carleton, in Mount Carleton Provincial Park

Mount Carleton Provincial Park

Mount Carleton Provincial Park, established in 1970, is the largest provincial park in the Province of New Brunswick, Canada. Encompassing 174 km² in the remote highlands of north-central New Brunswick, the park's dominant natural features include the highest peak in the Maritimes, Mount...

, is the highest elevation in the Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 province of New Brunswick

New Brunswick

New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...

, and is also the highest peak in the Canadian Maritime Provinces. It is one of the highlights of the Canadian portion of the International Appalachian Trail

International Appalachian Trail

The International Appalachian Trail is a hiking trail which runs from the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail at Mount Katahdin, Maine, through New Brunswick, to the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec, after which it takes bridge crossings to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, a ferry ride to...

. The mountain was named after Thomas Carleton

Thomas Carleton

Thomas Carleton was a British army officer who was promoted to Colonel during the American Revolutionary War after relieving the siege of Quebec in 1776. After the war, he was appointed as Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, and supervised the resettlement of Loyalists from the United States in...

, New Brunswick's first lieutenant governor

Lieutenant governor

A lieutenant governor or lieutenant-governor is a high officer of state, whose precise role and rank vary by jurisdiction, but is often the deputy or lieutenant to or ranking under a governor — a "second-in-command"...

.

Before aerial surveillance was extensively used, a hut was maintained on the summit for fire-spotting in the remote north-central part of the province. A very similar hut was maintained on Big Bald Mountain

Big Bald Mountain (New Brunswick)

Big Bald Mountain is a prominent peak in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. It lies adjacent to Colonels Mountain, east of the Christmas Mountains, and near the headwaters of the Northwest Miramichi River, the Sevogle River, and the South Branch Nepisiguit River...

. Triangulation

Triangulation

In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline, rather than measuring distances to the point directly...

 among these huts and other fire towers allowed the locations of wildfires to be determined quickly and easily.

Mount Carleton is a monadnock

Monadnock

A monadnock or inselberg is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain...

, an erosional remnant of resistant igneous rocks that remained after an ancient Mesozoic

Mesozoic

The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...

 peneplain

Peneplain

A peneplain is a low-relief plain representing the final stage of fluvial erosion during times of extended tectonic stability. The existence of peneplains, and peneplanation as a geomorphological process, is not without controversy, due to a lack of contemporary examples and uncertainty in...

 surface was uplifted in the Cenozoic

Cenozoic

The Cenozoic era is the current and most recent of the three Phanerozoic geological eras and covers the period from 65.5 mya to the present. The era began in the wake of the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous that saw the demise of the last non-avian dinosaurs and...

 to form a plateau

Plateau

In geology and earth science, a plateau , also called a high plain or tableland, is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain. A highly eroded plateau is called a dissected plateau...

, and subsequently dissected via millions of years of erosion by wind, water and glacial ice. It consists of 400 million-year-old rhyolitic

Rhyolite

This page is about a volcanic rock. For the ghost town see Rhyolite, Nevada, and for the satellite system, see Rhyolite/Aquacade.Rhyolite is an igneous, volcanic rock, of felsic composition . It may have any texture from glassy to aphanitic to porphyritic...

 and basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

ic volcanics.

See also

• List of highest points of Canadian provinces and territories
• Mountain peaks of Canada
  Mountain peaks of Canada
  This article comprises three sortable tables of major mountain peaks of Canada.Topographic elevation is the vertical distance above the reference geoid, a precise mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface. Topographic prominence is the elevation...
  
  
• Mountain peaks of North America
  Mountain peaks of North America
  This article comprises three sortable tables of major mountain peaks of greater North America.This article defines greater North America as the portion of the continental landmass of the Americas extending northward from Panama plus the islands surrounding that landmass...