It is widely distributed from near the south extremity of the high Sierra northward along the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington and the coast ranges of British Columbia to Alaska, where it was first discovered in 1827.

Its northernmost limit, so far as I have observed, is in the icy fiords of Prince William Sound in latitude 61 degrees, where it forms pure forests at the level of the sea, growing tall and majestic on the banks of glaciers.

There, as in the Yosemite region, it is ineffably beautiful, the very loveliest of all the American conifers.
The White-Bark Pine The Dwarf Pine, or White-Bark Pine (Pinus albicaulis), forms the extreme edge of the timberline throughout nearly the whole extent of the Range on both flanks.

It is first met growing with the two-leaved pine on the upper margin of the alpine belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet high and from one to two feet in diameter hence it goes straggling up the flanks of the summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges, wherever it can get a foothold, to an elevation of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled branches, covered with slender shoots, each tipped with a short, close-packed, leaf tassel.

The bark is smooth and purplish, in some places almost white.