29 Facts About Colorado River

Colorado River is one of the principal rivers in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

The name Colorado River derives from the Spanish language for "colored reddish" due to its heavy silt load.

From Grand Junction, the Colorado River turns northwest before cutting southwest across the eponymous Colorado River Plateau, a vast area of high desert centered at the Four Corners of the southwestern United States.

The Colorado then enters northern Arizona, where since the 1960s Glen Canyon Dam near Page has flooded the Glen Canyon reach of the river, forming Lake Powell for hydroelectricity generation.

At Morelos Dam, the entire remaining flow of the Colorado River is diverted to irrigate the Mexicali Valley, among Mexico's most fertile agricultural lands.

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The Green River takes drainage from the Wind River Range of west-central Wyoming, from Utah's Uinta Mountains, and from the Rockies of northwestern Colorado.

The Gila Colorado River is the second longest and drains a greater area than the Green, but has a significantly lower flow because of a more arid climate and larger diversions for irrigation and cities.

Since 1960, the Colorado River has typically dried up before reaching the sea, with the exception of a few wet years.

For hydrological management purposes, the Colorado River Basin is divided into the Upper Basin, and the Lower Basin.

The western boundary of the Colorado River Basin is formed by various ranges and plateaus that border the Great Basin, including the Uinta Mountains and Wasatch Range.

Major Great Basin watersheds bordering the Colorado River Basin are the Great Salt Lake and Sevier Lake watersheds.

Runoff patterns across the Colorado River Basin reflect this; most of the perennial tributaries originate in the Upper Basin, while tributaries in the Lower Basin are either ephemeral or highly seasonal .

The Colorado River first formed as a west-flowing stream draining the southwestern portion of the range, and the uplift diverted the Green River, once a tributary of the Mississippi River, west towards the Colorado.

Some Puebloans migrated to the Rio Grande Valley of central New Mexico and south-central Colorado River, becoming the predecessors of the Hopi, Zuni, Laguna and Acoma people in western New Mexico.

Colorado River ascended the river in twenty one days as far as the first rapids in Pyramid Canyon, over 300 miles above Fort Yuma and 8 miles above the modern site of Davis Dam.

Colorado River then took a small boat up beyond the canyon to Fortification Rock and Las Vegas Wash.

In 1859, a group of adventurers from Georgia discovered gold along the Blue River in Colorado and established the mining boomtown of Breckenridge.

Colorado River headquarters was nominally based in Mexico, but its real headquarters was in Los Angeles, California.

Colorado River largely escaped the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution, but in the postrevolutionary period, the Mexican government expropriated the company's land to satisfy the demand for land reform.

Taylor saw the fact that the Colorado River started outside the border of his state as an "abomination".

Hydroelectricity from the Colorado River is a key supplier of peaking power on the Southwest electric grid.

Water allocated to Mexico from the Colorado River is regulated by the International Boundary and Water Commission, which apportions waters from the Rio Grande between the two countries.

The construction of Hoover Dam stabilized the lower channel of the Colorado River, stored water for irrigation in times of drought, captured sediment and controlled floods.

Parker Dam was initially built as the diversion point for the Colorado River Aqueduct, planned by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to supply water to Los Angeles.

Human development of the Colorado River has helped to create new riparian zones by smoothing the river's seasonal flow, notably through the Grand Canyon.

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Rivers and streams in the Colorado basin were once home to 49 species of native fish, of which 42 were endemic.

Currently, the majority of sediments carried by the Colorado River are deposited at the upper end of Lake Powell, and most of the remainder ends up in Lake Mead.

Since 1963, the only times when the Colorado River has reached the ocean have been during El Nino events in the 1980s and 1990s.

The upper Colorado includes many of the river's most challenging rapids, including those in Gore Canyon, which is considered so dangerous that "boating is not recommended".