Interior Mountains

There are four main groupings, the Skeena, Cassiar and Omineca Mountains to the north of the Interior Plateau between the Coast Mountains to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east, and the Hazelton Mountains along the Interior Plateau's northwestern flank against the Coast Mountains, extending from the Bulkley Ranges south to the Bella Coola River. Included within the Interior Mountains system is the Stikine Plateau, which contains a number of sub-plateaus and various mountain ranges and is located west of the Cassiars, north of the Skeenas, and to the east of the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains.

Most of the thousands of summits in the Interior Mountains are unnamed, and they are mostly uninhabited and undeveloped.

Etymology

The terms Interior Mountains and Northern Interior Mountains were coined by British Columbia government geographer Stuart Holland in the course of writing his Landforms of British Columbia, which is a definitive volume on the province's topography and toponymy written in 1964. This work is used as the basis for official toponymies such as those in the provincial gazette and the British Columbia Geographic Names Information System Database (BCGNIS), which is the official registry of the province's geographic names.

The term Interior Mountains, used by Holland throughout his work and as a chapter heading describing the mountain system in question, is not present in the Geographical Names Database despite being a chapter heading and appearing on Holland's map of the province's landform systems. He suggests, also, the term "Northern Interior Mountains", partly because the mountain system is in a region also known as the Northern Interior, but also to potentially distinguish this mountain system from mountain ranges farther south in the province's Interior, including those of the Interior Plateau. In his exegesis, he decided on "Interior Mountains" for reasons of brevity.