- There are several ways in which rolling hills are formed, but to have hills, in most cases, there must first be mountains. Mountains are formed in three ways. The first is called folding. This is when to large plates of rock in the earth's crust are pushed together in such a way that the rock on both sides slowly folds together pushing upward out of the earth. Blocking is another way plates can create mountains. In this instance, the plates that collide are made of stronger material and the rock does not give. Either both plates are pushed up creating two sets of mountains or one plate is pushed up while the other goes underneath. If this happens, there is one mountain that has a steep side and a sloping side.
- The third way mountains are formed is called doming. This is when magma is pushed up to the earth surface, but does not break through. It slowly cools creating a hard core inside the mountain. This method of creating sometimes does form rolling hills due to the rounded way the magma pushes up on the earth. If the force is not too great, then hills instead of mountains are formed.
- The main way rolling hills are formed, however, is through time. It takes time, water, wind, snow and ice to create most hills that are seen today. Erosion is the key to all of it. Mountains that were at one point as tall as the Rockies are not worn down to half the size. The Blue Ridge Mountains are considered to be very old and thought by scientists to have once been much taller. Other much smaller mountains would be merely hills in the present, forced smaller and smaller by rain and streams, taken down inch by inch by winds removing earth little by little and sculpting away the rough edges, leaving them smooth.