Arkansas
Arkansas is a mapped river in the YearMaps hydrographic index. River courses organise settlement, agriculture and frontier-making more durably than any political boundary, and this reach is indexed against the dams, lakes and cities within its catchment.
- Feature Class
- River
- Coordinates
- 37.70°, -99.57°
About Arkansas
The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's source basin lies in Colorado, specifically the Arkansas River Valley. The headwaters derive from the snowpack in the Sawatch and Mosquito mountain ranges. It flows east into Kansas and finally through Oklahoma and Arkansas, where it meets the Mississippi River.
At 1,469 miles (2,364 km), it is the sixth-longest river in the United States, the second-longest tributary in the Mississippi–Missouri system, and the 47th longest river in the world. Its origin is in the Rocky Mountains in Lake County, Colorado, near Leadville. In 1859, placer gold discovered in the Leadville area brought thousands seeking to strike it rich, but the easily recovered placer gold was quickly exhausted. The Arkansas River's mouth is at Napoleon, Arkansas, and its drainage basin covers nearly 170,000 square miles (440,000 km2). Its volume is much smaller than the Missouri and Ohio rivers, with a mean discharge of about 40,000 cubic feet per second (1,100 m3/s).
Encyclopedic summary adapted from Wikipedia: Arkansas River (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Arkansas in Depth
Physical geography
The path of the Arkansas River has changed over time. Sediments from the river found in a palaeochannel next to Nolan, a site in the Tensas Basin, show that part of the river's meander belt flowed through that area up to 3200 BCE. While it was previously thought that this relict channel was active at the same time as another relict of the Mississippi River's meander belt, it has been shown that this channel of the Arkansas was inactive approximately 400 years before the Mississippi channel was active.
The Arkansas has three distinct sections in its long path through central North America.
In history
Many nations of Native Americans lived near, or along, the 1,450-mile (2,334-km) stretch of the Arkansas River for thousands of years. The first Europeans to see the river were members of the Spanish Coronado expedition on June 29, 1541. Also in the 1540s, Hernando de Soto discovered the junction of the Arkansas with the Mississippi. The Spanish originally called the river Napeste. "The name "Arkansas" was first applied by French Father Jacques Marquette, who called the river Akansa in his journal of 1673, naming it the same name as the French called the tribal people who lived on the Arkansas River. Today this tribe is known as Quapaw.
Sections adapted from Wikipedia: Arkansas River (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Arkansas: Key Facts
| Length | 2,364 km |
|---|---|
| Average discharge | 240 m³/s |
| Drainage basin | 505,000 km² |
| Source | East Fork Arkansas River |
| Mouth | Mississippi River |
| Drainage system | Arkansas River basin |
| Tributaries | Salt Fork Arkansas River, Cimarron River, Neosho River, Canadian River, Verdigris River, Purgatoire River, Apishapa River, Bayou Meto |
Facts from Wikidata Q8319 (CC0).
Major River Dossiers
Hand-written studies of the great river systems of history.
Connected Reaches
Nearby watercourses in the same drainage network.
Water Bodies in the Catchment
Settlements Along the Reach
Hydraulic Infrastructure Nearby
Surrounding Terrain
Arkansas: Quick Answers
- Where is Arkansas?
- Arkansas is located in United States, at 37.7001° N, 99.5703° W.
- Are there dams on the Arkansas?
- No dam on the Arkansas is recorded in the YearMaps dam index, which covers major structures only.