50 Fun Facts About US Rivers

Which river is dyed green for St. Patrick's Day and had its direction of flow reversed in 1900?

The Chicago River tradition arose by accident in 1961, when plumbers were using dye to trace illegal pollution. The plumbers union went on to sponsor the yearly dyeing.

Which river carved the Grand Canyon but has rarely reached the sea since the 1960s?

The Colorado is drained so heavily that its lower 100 miles have dried up. A planned 2014 release let it touch the ocean for the first time in 16 years.

Which river, the longest in the United States, joins the Mississippi just north of St. Louis?

The Missouri carries so much silt that it earned the nickname 'Big Muddy'. It runs 2,341 miles from the Rocky Mountains of Montana.

Which river did George Washington cross on Christmas night 1776 to surprise the Hessians at Trenton?

The Delaware crossing set up Washington's victory over the Hessians at Trenton the next morning. Emanuel Leutze's famous painting of the scene dates from 1851, 75 years later.

Which river, a concrete channel ending at Long Beach, hosted the car race in the film Grease?

The Los Angeles River ran free until a series of devastating floods led to it being locked into a fixed concrete course. Terminator 2 and Chinatown also filmed along it.

Which Florida wetland did writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas famously describe as a 'River of Grass'?

The Everglades is really a broad, shallow sheet of water creeping slowly along, which is why the phrase stuck. Douglas's book appeared a month before the national park was dedicated.

Which Mississippi River city, home of Beale Street, was named after an ancient capital of Egypt?

Memphis was founded in 1819 by a trio that included future president Andrew Jackson. Both cities stand beside a great river: the Mississippi and the Nile.

In which Mark Twain novel do a runaway boy and an escaped slave named Jim raft down the Mississippi?

Huckleberry Finn sends Huck and Jim drifting toward Cairo, Illinois, in a free state. It was among the first major American novels written throughout in everyday dialect.

Which Cleveland river caught fire in 1969, helping to inspire the Environmental Protection Agency?

The Cuyahoga had burned at least a dozen times before, the first in 1868. In 1969 a spark from a passing rail car lit an oil slick on its surface.

Which river forms the border between Texas and Mexico, where it is known as the Río Bravo?

The Rio Grande's Mexican name uses bravo in the sense of furious or wild. Two stretches, one of them at Big Bend National Park, are protected as Wild and Scenic Rivers.

Which river flows from the Adirondack Mountains past Albany to New York City?

The Hudson is named for an Englishman who explored it in 1609 while sailing for the Dutch East India Company. A huge bay in Canada carries his name too.

Which river meets the Shenandoah at Harpers Ferry before flowing past Washington, D.C.?

The Potomac is nicknamed 'the Nation's River' for the American history along its banks. George Washington was born in its basin, surveyed it and spent most of his life there.

Which Arizona–Nevada dam was officially called Boulder Dam until Congress restored its name in 1947?

Hoover Dam was the name in the bills Congress passed, but the Roosevelt administration called it Boulder Dam after Herbert Hoover lost the 1932 election.

Which city on a crescent bend of the Mississippi River lies largely below sea level behind levees?

New Orleans is nicknamed the Crescent City for that curve. Pumps opened its swamps to building, but the drained ground then sank below sea level.

Which Minnesota lake did explorer Henry Schoolcraft identify as the source of the Mississippi River?

Itasca is a name Schoolcraft invented, stitched together from the Latin words veritas caput, which he meant as 'true head'.

Which river drops over Horseshoe Falls and American Falls on the border of New York and Ontario?

The Niagara flows north on a short run between two of the Great Lakes. Goat Island and tiny Luna Island split its falls into three separate sections.

Which river, Alaska's longest, carried paddle-wheel riverboats until a highway opened in the 1950s?

The Yukon was one of the main routes to the goldfields during the Klondike Gold Rush. It runs 1,980 miles before emptying into the Bering Sea.

Which river, the largest in the Pacific Northwest, forms most of the Washington–Oregon border?

The Columbia takes its name from a Boston ship, the Columbia Rediviva, which in 1792 became the first non-indigenous vessel to enter it.

Which river flows from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois, as the Mississippi's largest tributary by volume?

The Ohio pours more water into the Mississippi than any other tributary. It also serves as the boundary between the Midwest and the South.

Which term names the U-shaped lake left behind when a river like the Mississippi cuts off a meander?

Oxbow lakes are named after the curved part of a harness worn by oxen pulling a plough. They form when a river erodes through the narrow neck of a looping bend.

Which river cuts Hells Canyon, a gorge deeper than the Grand Canyon, on the border of Idaho and Oregon?

The Snake has carved North America's deepest river gorge, 7,993 feet deep. Elsewhere in Idaho, Evel Knievel failed to rocket across its canyon in 1974.

Which river forms at Knoxville, flows southwest through Chattanooga and then crosses into Alabama?

The Tennessee misses Georgia by only about 250 feet as it leaves Chattanooga. Since the 1930s it has been dammed nine times by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Which Nebraska river, followed by the Oregon Trail, did pioneers joke was a mile wide and six inches deep?

The Platte probably gets its name from the French for 'flat river'. Gold-rush 49ers called its water 'too thick to drink, too thin to plow'.

Which river rises in the Texas panhandle and flows east as the border between Texas and Oklahoma?

The Red River takes its name from the reddish tint it picks up crossing red-bed country. Its south bank was once part of the frontier between the United States and Mexico.

Which Florida river was chosen from an atlas for Stephen Foster's 'Old Folks at Home', though he never saw it?

The Suwannee, spelled 'Swanee' in the lyric, was chosen after Foster turned down the Yazoo and the Pee Dee. Florida made the tune its state song in 1935.

Which river, the longest on the East Coast, flows around Three Mile Island on its way to Chesapeake Bay?

The Susquehanna supplies half of Chesapeake Bay's fresh water. The bay is in fact the river's own lower valley, drowned when sea levels rose.

Which Virginia river, flowing through Richmond, did colonists in 1607 name after their monarch in England?

The James was named by the Jamestown colonists as they built the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Native Americans had called it the Powhatan River.

Which river, the longest in New England, forms the boundary between Vermont and New Hampshire?

The Connecticut does not carry the state line midstream. In 1933 the Supreme Court fixed it at the low-water mark on the Vermont shore, ending nearly 150 years of disputes.

Which river flows past Augusta as most of the border between Georgia and South Carolina?

The Savannah boundary has a twist: a 1787 treaty reserved every island in the river for Georgia. In 1990 the Supreme Court gave newly formed islands on the far side to South Carolina.

Which river drops over two waterfalls into its own Grand Canyon inside America's first national park?

The Yellowstone is often said to be named for that canyon's yellow rocks, but the people credited with the name never lived along its upper stretches.

Which Mississippi River city surrendered to Grant on July 4, 1863, splitting the Confederacy in two?

Vicksburg held out for more than 40 days, until its garrison's supplies were nearly gone. Lincoln had called the city 'the key to the war'.

Which Mississippi River town was Mark Twain's boyhood home and a setting he drew on for Tom Sawyer?

Hannibal was where Samuel Clemens grew up in the mid-1800s, long before he took his pen name. The museum in his boyhood home marked its 100th anniversary in 2012.

Which one-armed Civil War veteran led the first official boat expedition through the Grand Canyon?

John Wesley Powell had lost his right arm below the elbow at the Battle of Shiloh. A huge man-made reservoir on the same river carries his name.

Which inventor's steamboat, nicknamed the Clermont, began running between New York City and Albany in 1807?

Robert Fulton's boat needed 32 hours of travel to reach Albany. It is widely regarded as the first vessel to show that steam power could work for commercial transport.

Which 363-mile waterway, ridiculed as 'Clinton's ditch' before opening in 1825, linked Albany to Buffalo?

The Erie Canal was the first navigable waterway joining the Atlantic to the upper Great Lakes. When built it was the world's second-longest canal, after China's Grand Canal.

Which line along the Rockies separates rivers bound for the Pacific from those flowing to the Atlantic?

The Continental Divide runs all the way from the Bering Strait to the Strait of Magellan. From Triple Divide Peak in Montana, water flows toward three different oceans.

Which Washington State dam, America's largest power station, has a Woody Guthrie song named after it?

Grand Coulee became the country's largest power station when its third powerhouse was completed in 1974. The workers who built the dam earned an average of 80 cents an hour.

Mark Twain's pen name comes from a Mississippi riverboat cry for safe water measuring two of which unit?

Fathoms are six feet each, so the leadsman's cry of 'mark twain' meant twelve feet of water, enough for a steamboat. Samuel Clemens first signed the name in 1863.

Which city grew around Saint Anthony Falls, once the only major natural waterfall on the Mississippi River?

Minneapolis harnessed the falls to drive so many mills that it was known as the 'Flour Milling Capital of the World' from 1880 to about 1930.

Custer's Last Stand was fought beside which Montana river, known to the Lakota as the Greasy Grass?

The Little Bighorn gave the battle its usual name, though the Lakota call it the Battle of the Greasy Grass. The river's other official names include the Custer River.

Which river passes Dodge City, Wichita, Tulsa and Little Rock on its way to the Mississippi?

The Arkansas is pronounced ar-KAN-zas in Kansas but AR-kan-saw in the other three states it crosses. At 1,469 miles it is the sixth-longest river in the United States.

Which river, flowing southwest to Atlanta, gave country star Alan Jackson the title of an award-winning song?

Chattahoochee won the CMA awards for both Single of the Year and Song of the Year. The river itself forms the southern half of the border between Alabama and Georgia.

Which Boston river's pollution inspired the Standells' song 'Dirty Water', a longtime anthem at Fenway Park?

The Charles was famously polluted when the song appeared in 1965. Its line about 'lovers, muggers, and thieves' was reportedly inspired by the mugging of the band's producer in Boston.

Which seismic zone produced the 1811–12 earthquakes that reportedly made the Mississippi River run backward?

New Madrid's quakes also raised temporary waterfalls on the river and dammed streams to form Reelfoot Lake. One eyewitness wrote that the current was 'retrograde for a few minutes'.

Which river flows north through the valley Oregon Trail pioneers aimed for, with its mouth at Portland?

The Willamette valley holds two-thirds of Oregon's population. In the 1800s a waterfall just upstream from Portland was a major barrier to boat traffic.

Texas judge Roy Bean, who held court in his own saloon, called himself 'The Only Law West of' which river?

The Pecos gave the Wild West a byword for rugged desolation: 'West of the Pecos'. Bean set up about 20 miles beyond it, in a spot soon renamed Langtry.

Which Idaho river is nicknamed the 'River of No Return' and flows through a vast wilderness area of that name?

The Salmon winds through a canyon with roughly 7,000 feet of vertical relief. Explorers who ventured down it in 1805 found it too rough to be navigable.

Which river, the longest in Florida, flows north to Jacksonville while dropping less than 30 feet?

The St. Johns creeps along at about 0.3 mph, slow enough that it is often described as 'lazy'. At its widest it is three miles across.

Which river, celebrated in Indiana's state song, forms the southern part of the Indiana–Illinois border?

The Wabash has shifted course several times along that border, leaving cut-off stretches that lie entirely in one state. The song is 'On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away'.

The Old River Control Structure keeps the Mississippi from switching course into which Louisiana river?

The Atchafalaya carried under 10 percent of the two rivers' combined flow in 1850 but about 30 percent by 1950. Floodgates completed in 1963 hold the split at 70 to 30.