28 Facts About River Missouri

Missouri River was one of the main routes for the westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century.

At Sioux City the Big Sioux River comes in from the north, after which the Missouri forms the Iowa–Nebraska boundary.

The Missouri swings east at Kansas City, where the Kansas River enters from the west, and so on into north-central Missouri.

The Columbia, Missouri and Colorado River watersheds meet at Three Waters Mountain in Wyoming's Wind River Range.

South of there, the Missouri basin is bordered on the west by the drainage of the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado, then on the south by the mainstem of the Colorado.

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The Yellowstone River Missouri has the highest discharge, even though the Platte is longer and drains a larger area.

Immediately before the Quaternary Ice Age, the Missouri River was likely split into three segments: an upper portion that drained northwards into Hudson Bay, and middle and lower sections that flowed eastward down the regional slope.

In western Montana, the Missouri River is thought to have once flowed north then east around the Bear Paw Mountains.

Indigenous peoples of North America who have lived along the River Missouri have historically had access to ample food, water, and shelter.

However, the Missouri itself remained formally unexplored until Etienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont commanded an expedition in 1714 that reached at least as far as the mouth of the Platte River.

However, this ended after news of incursions by trappers working for the Hudson's Bay Company in the upper Missouri River watershed was brought back following an expedition by Jacques D'Eglise in the early 1790s.

The Hannibal Bridge became the first bridge to cross the Missouri River in 1869, and its location was a major reason why Kansas City became the largest city on the river upstream from its mouth at St Louis.

The 1944 act authorized the Pick–Sloan River Missouri Basin Program, which was a composite of two widely varying proposals.

Flooding of lands along the Missouri River heavily impacted Native American groups whose reservations included fertile bottomlands and floodplains, especially in the arid Dakotas where it was some of the only good farmland they had.

Boat travel on the Missouri began with the wood-framed canoes and bull boats that Native Americans used for thousands of years before the colonization of the Great Plains introduced larger craft to the river.

The first steamboat on the River Missouri was the Independence, which started running between St Louis and Keytesville, River Missouri around 1819.

However, the River Missouri has often resisted the efforts of the USACE to control its depth.

The Upper Missouri River is north of Gavins Point Dam, the last hydroelectric dam of fifteen on the river, just upstream from Sioux City, Iowa.

The Lower Missouri River is the 840 miles of river below Gavins Point until it meets the Mississippi just above St Louis.

Tonnage of goods shipped by barges on the Missouri River has seen a serious decline from the 1960s to the present.

Part of the reason is that irrigated land along the River Missouri has only been developed to a fraction of its potential.

World Wide Fund For Nature divides the Missouri River watershed into three freshwater ecoregions: the Upper Missouri, Lower Missouri and Central Prairie.

The Upper River Missouri, roughly encompassing the area within Montana, Wyoming, southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, and North Dakota, comprises mainly semiarid shrub-steppe grasslands with sparse biodiversity because of Ice Age glaciations.

The Middle River Missouri ecoregion, extending through Colorado, southwestern Minnesota, northern Kansas, Nebraska, and parts of Wyoming and Iowa, has greater rainfall and is characterized by temperate forests and grasslands.

Plant life is more diverse in the Middle River Missouri, which is home to about twice as many animal species.

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Finally, the Central Prairie ecoregion is situated on the lower part of the River Missouri, encompassing all or parts of River Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Channelization of the lower Missouri waters has made the river narrower, deeper and less accessible to riparian flora and fauna.

Several sections of the Missouri River were added to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System from Fort Benton to Robinson Bridge, Gavins Point Dam to Ponca State Park and Fort Randall Dam to Lewis and Clark Lake.