Highest Point in Each State: All 50 State High Points

The highest point in the United States is Denali (Mount McKinley) in Alaska at 20,310 feet (6,190 m), and the lowest state high point is Britton Hill in Florida at 345 feet (105 m). In the contiguous states, the highest is Mount Whitney in California at 14,494 feet in the USGS table (14,505 feet on the modern NAVD 88 datum).

The table lists the highest and lowest point in every state and the District of Columbia. Elevations are from the U.S. Geological Survey's reference table "Elevations and Distances in the United States", except Denali, which uses the 2015 survey value. Meters are converted from feet (1 ft = 0.3048 m) and rounded.

Two names differ from the USGS table: South Dakota's Harney Peak was renamed Black Elk Peak by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 2016, and Alaska's peak, listed by USGS as Mount McKinley, was officially Denali from 2015 to 2025 and is again Mount McKinley in federal use, inside Denali National Park and Preserve.

Only four states have a high point above 14,000 feet: Alaska, California, Colorado (Mount Elbert, 14,433 ft) and Washington (Mount Rainier, 14,411 ft). Of the 50 high points, 13 are above 10,000 feet, all in the western states, Alaska and Hawaii; the lowest of them is Oregon's Mount Hood (11,239 ft). Below that the list drops quickly: Texas's Guadalupe Peak (8,749 ft) and South Dakota's Black Elk Peak (7,242 ft) come next, and 28 states top out below 5,000 feet.

Hawaii's Mauna Kea, at 13,796 feet, is the highest point of any island state and ranks 6th overall, just below Wyoming's Gannett Peak.

East of the Mississippi, the highest state high point is Mount Mitchell in North Carolina (6,684 ft), just ahead of Tennessee's Clingmans Dome (6,643 ft) and New Hampshire's Mount Washington (6,288 ft).

The ten flattest states by high point are:

1. Florida: Britton Hill, 345 ft (105 m)
2. Delaware: Ebright Road at the Pennsylvania line, 448 ft (137 m)
3. Louisiana: Driskill Mountain, 535 ft (163 m)
4. Mississippi: Woodall Mountain, 806 ft (246 m)
5. Rhode Island: Jerimoth Hill, 812 ft (247 m)
6. Illinois: Charles Mound, 1,235 ft (376 m)
7. Indiana: Hoosier Hill, 1,257 ft (383 m)
8. Ohio: Campbell Hill, 1,550 ft (472 m)
9. Iowa: Hawkeye Point, 1,670 ft (509 m)
10. Missouri: Taum Sauk Mountain, 1,772 ft (540 m)

Florida, Delaware and Louisiana all top out below 550 feet. Delaware's high point is not a summit at all: the USGS lists it as a spot on Ebright Road at the Delaware-Pennsylvania state line. Connecticut's is similar, a point on the south slope of Mount Frissell where the state line crosses it; the peak itself is in Massachusetts. Several Midwestern high points, including Hoosier Hill in Indiana (1,257 ft), Campbell Hill in Ohio (1,550 ft) and Charles Mound in Illinois (1,235 ft), are low rises rather than mountains. The highest ground in the District of Columbia, at 410 feet, is at Tenleytown near Reno Reservoir.

Most states with a coastline have sea level as their lowest point. The exceptions sit below sea level or well above it:

• Below sea level: Death Valley, California (−282 ft in the USGS table) is the lowest point in the United States. The USGS lists New Orleans, Louisiana at −8 ft.
• Highest low points: Colorado's lowest point, on the Arikaree River, is 3,315 feet, the highest low point of any state; no part of Colorado is below 3,300 feet. Wyoming (3,099 ft on the Belle Fourche River), New Mexico (2,842 ft) and Utah (2,000 ft) follow.
• Great Lakes states bottom out at lake level: 571 feet on Lake Erie for Michigan, 579 feet on Lake Michigan for Wisconsin and 601 feet on Lake Superior for Minnesota.

The difference between a state's high and low point is its relief. Alaska has the most (20,310 ft from sea level to Denali), followed by California at 14,776 feet from Death Valley to Mount Whitney in the USGS figures.

Relief, the drop from a state's highest point to its lowest, says more about terrain than the high point alone. Colorado has the highest low point and a very high summit, so its relief is smaller than Washington's, where Mount Rainier stands in a state whose lowest point is sea level.

At the other end, Florida (345 ft), Delaware (448 ft), Louisiana (543 ft) have the least relief. Florida's whole range fits within a 345-foot climb; Delaware's within 448 feet. Kansas, which has a reputation for flatness, still spans 3,360 feet from the Verdigris River to Mount Sunflower, because the Great Plains tilt steadily upward toward the Rockies.

You will find Mount Whitney listed at 14,494, 14,495 and 14,505 feet, and Denali at 20,310 and 20,320 feet. Each number was correct for the method behind it:

• Vertical datum. The USGS table was compiled from topographic maps referenced to the older National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD 29). Current surveys use the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88), and the same point can have a height a few feet different on the two datums, with the largest shifts in the West. The National Park Service gives Mount Whitney as 14,505 ft (4,421 m) on NAVD 88.
• New surveys. Denali was 20,320 feet from a 1953 survey. A 2015 GPS survey with an improved geoid model measured 20,310 feet to the top of the summit ice cap, and USGS adopted that value.
• Snow and ice. Summits capped by ice or snow, such as Denali and Mount Rainier, change height as the ice changes.
• Rounding. Some lists convert to meters and back, or round to 5 or 10 feet.

For a list like this one, the differences rarely change a rank. They matter when you compare a figure from one source with a figure from another: take both from the same table.

Our elevation tools read a global terrain model rather than a summit survey, which is worth understanding before you test them on a peak. The elevation finder returns the height of any point you click from the Copernicus 30 m digital elevation model, so each value is an average over a cell roughly 100 feet across. On a sharp summit that average is usually a little lower than the surveyed top; on flat high points like Britton Hill or Panorama Point it is close.

To see your current height above sea level, my elevation uses your device location and the same terrain data. To see how a route climbs toward a high point, the elevation profile tool charts the terrain along a line through two or more points you click, with total ascent, descent and the steepest grade.