Columbia River | river, North America. Columbia River, Columbia River Gorge© Corbislargest river flowing into the Pacific Ocean from North America.
It is exceeded in discharge on the continent only by the Mississippi, St. Lawrence, and Mackenzie rivers.
The Columbia is one of the world’s greatest sources of hydroelectric power and, with its tributaries, represents a third of the potential hydropower of the United States. In addition, its mouth provides the first deepwater harbour north of San Francisco.
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Download Free Sound Effects. Be the first to know when sounds are online! Receive our latest tips and tricks!
Two- fifths of the river’s course, some 5. Canada, between its headwaters in British Columbia and the U. S. border. Physical features. Physiography and hydrology. Colorado River. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The Columbia drains some 2. United States. Major tributaries are the Kootenay, Snake, Pend Oreille, Spokane, Okanogan, Yakima, Cowlitz, and Willamette rivers.
- Gourmet Food Trucks for Sale. Get all of the Business Services You Need to Start a Food Truck, for the Same Cost of a Food Truck. Call 888.983.8383 Today!
- Visit Kijiji Classifieds to buy, sell, or trade almost anything! Used cars, pets, jobs, services, electronics, homes, boats for sale and more locally anywhere in Canada.
- MLA style: 'Columbia River'. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 29 May. 2016 < http://www.britannica.
- In rare cases the river delta is located inside a large valley and is called an inverted river delta. Sometimes a river divides into multiple branches in an inland.
- Nous vous proposons des solutions innovatrices en matière de sécurité. Elle pourra vous diriger dans vos décisions quant à l’implantation d’un système.
- If you are a teacher searching for educational material, please visit PBS LearningMedia for a wide range of free digital resources spanning preschool through 12th grade.
- Eniva best selling nutritional supplements. Sign up for our newsletter. Get great deals and insights sent directly to your inbox!
High flows occur in late spring and early summer, when snow melts in the mountainous watershed. Low flows occur in autumn and winter, causing water shortages at the river’s hydroelectric plants.
Revelstoke. Tourism Canada; photograph, P. Gaudard. The Columbia flows from its source in Columbia Lake, at an elevation of 2,7. British Columbia near the crest of the Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Oregon. For the first 1. 90 miles (3. It then flows to the south for 2.
Canada and the United States (elevation 1,2. Washington. It traverses east- central Washington in a sweeping curve known as the Big Bend, its prehistoric course having been disarranged first by lava flows and later by ice sheets. The ice sheets were instrumental in creating the Channelled Scablands, a series of coulees (steep- walled ravines) trending northeast- southwest in the northern part of the Columbia Plateau; Grand Coulee is the largest of these. The scablands were formed as immense torrents of water, released intermittently from ice- dammed lakes upstream, swept down- valley. Shortly below the confluence with the Snake River, its largest tributary, the Columbia turns west and continues 3. Oregon and Washington; in this last stretch the river has carved the spectacular Columbia River Gorge through the Cascade Range. Tides flow upriver for 1.
Portland, Oregon (about 1. Vancouver, Washington (1. Through the use of a series of locks, barge traffic is made possible to Lewiston, Idaho, more than 4. Clearwater and Snake rivers. Climate. The Columbia River basin’s climate, strongly affected by orographic influences, is partly continental and partly marine. The Rocky Mountains to the east block out most of the severe winter storms of the interior of the continent, and the Cascade Range to the west shields the basin from moist Pacific Ocean air.
Summers are typically hot and dry with only occasional thundershowers; winters are moderately cold and dry with occasional snow or even rain. Temperature and precipitation vary greatly with elevation, but in the central basin January average daily temperatures are between about 2. F (−4 and −1 °C), and July averages are mostly between 7. F (2. 1 and 2. 4 °C). Average annual precipitation ranges from less than 8 inches (2. West of the Cascades the climate is marine- influenced, with long, rainy winters and cool, dry summers.
Plant and animal life. Columbia River. Bruce Heinemann/Getty Images.
Native vegetation at lower elevations of the interior basin is mostly of the shrub- steppe variety, dominated by sagebrush and bunchgrasses. With increasing elevation, shrub- steppe gives way to ponderosa pines and then to firs, larches, and other pines. More than half of the original shrub- steppe vegetation has been eliminated by grazing and farming. Cheatgrass has become a troublesome invader.
Greasewood and alkali salt grass dominate on poorly drained saline soils, while willows and black cottonwoods dominate along watercourses. West of the Cascades, forests of Douglas firs with hemlocks and western red cedars prevail in upland areas. Animal life was abundant and varied prior to white settlement. Notable were the great runs of salmon and steelhead trout; populations of beavers, deer, elk, bears, and bighorn sheep; flocks of waterfowl and upland birds, including eagles, ospreys, hawks, and falcons; and numbers of western rattlesnakes.
The ability of the region to sustain large populations of wildlife has been drastically reduced, especially for salmon and beavers. Bald eagles and peregrine falcons were once listed as endangered but have recovered in numbers throughout the region.
However, there has been continued concern over the declining number of salmon, despite the presence of fish ladders and other passage facilities designed to make possible the continued annual upstream run of spawning salmon beyond dams on the river. Economy. Grand Coulee Dam. David Brodbeck. Many controversies have marked the economic development of the Columbia River. Notable among these have been the division of responsibility between public and private agencies, the effect on the fish life (particularly salmon) and loss of traditional Indian fishing sites, proposals for a Columbia Valley Authority, the proper rate of interest to be charged on the federal government’s investment in hydroelectric power development, and arrangements for sharing power- generating revenues and costs with Canada for upstream storage reservoirs in British Columbia. Nonetheless, exploiting the river’s hydroelectric and irrigation potentials has been instrumental in developing the region’s economy.
Bonneville Dam: fish ladder. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. This multipurpose development of the Columbia’s main stem began in the 1. Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams by the federal government.
Nearly all of the river’s 1,2. United States has been converted into a series of “stair steps” by 1. British Columbia constructed in accordance with a treaty between the United States and Canada. The four lower dams on the Columbia, plus four more on the lower Snake, provide large navigation locks, and all are equipped with fish- passage facilities. Grand Coulee Dam, the largest and most complex of the Columbia’s dams, augments the low winter flows when power demand is greatest. A powerhouse completed in the 1. Canadian storage capacity, and the dam has remained one of the world’s largest hydroelectric power plants.
Water also is pumped from Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake, the reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam, for the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, the largest single project of its kind in the Northwest and the first large- scale use of the Columbia River itself for irrigation. The first water delivery was made in 1.
Some three- fifths of the project’s planned area is now being irrigated. A major share of the cost of this expensive project is being paid by the sale of the power generated at Grand Coulee Dam.
All power plants along the system are connected by high- voltage, federally owned transmission lines, the backbone of a power network in which all utilities of the Pacific Northwest participate. This system is linked with the power grid in the state of California and with the American Southwest; surplus Columbia River power is sold to the Southwest during the summer (and Southwestern steam- generated power to the Northwest during the winter). The Columbia River Treaty with Canada (1. United States to pay British Columbia sums representing that province’s share of power and flood- control benefits, for British Columbia to build three large dams (two of them on the Columbia), and for the United States to build a fourth dam (on the Kootenay in Montana). History. Lewis and Clark Expedition: Lewis and Clark Expedition canoeing on the lower Columbia River.
The Granger Collection, New York. Numerous Native American peoples inhabited the Columbia River basin for several thousand years. Spanish explorers sailing up the Pacific coast about 1. Europeans to sight the river’s mouth. The Boston trader Robert Gray sailed up the Columbia in 1.
The American Lewis and Clark Expedition wintered at its mouth in 1. English geographer, David Thompson, explored most of the river for the North West Company, reaching the mouth in 1.
Fort Astoria was already being built by the Americans. The upper basin was explored for the North West Company between 1. Other early posts included Fort Vancouver (1. Hudson’s Bay Company, and Fort Walla Walla (1.
North West Company (after 1. Hudson’s Bay Company). Irrigation apparently was practiced at Fort Walla Walla (near present- day Wallula, Washington) by the early 1.
Dr. Marcus Whitman at nearby Waiilatpu, and it was later extended to many tributary valleys east of the Cascade Range. The main stem of the Columbia was too deeply entrenched for early irrigation, but, as the only sea- level route to the interior, it served as the major transportation artery until the coming of the railroad.
The canoes and barges of the fur traders and early immigrants had given way to river steamers by the 1. The many rapids—2.
Snake River—made navigation difficult; the worst point was circumvented by the first railroad in Washington, a 1. The heavy agricultural and mining trade of the Columbia River basin was dominated by Portland through a monopolistic combination of river steamers and connecting stages. A railroad was completed from Portland to Walla Walla, Washington, in 1. St. Paul, Minnesota, to Portland and thence to Tacoma, Washington, on Puget Sound the following year. In 1. 88. 7 the Northern Pacific Railway reached Tacoma directly over the Cascade Range, and the monopoly of the Columbia River route was ended.
The abundance of salmon was noted by the early explorers. The first cannery on the Columbia opened in 1.
Columbia River canneries were supplying world markets, especially Great Britain, with salmon caught in nets, traps, and wheels. From a record of 2. Columbia River salmon catch has declined to about 1.