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A river of the south-central United States rising in the Rocky Mountains in central Colorado and flowing about 2,333 km (1,450 mi) generally southeastward to the Mississippi River in southeast Arkansas. It was an important trade and travel route in the 19th century.
For more information on Arkansas River, visit Britannica.com.
Arkansas River emerges in central Colorado and flows southeast through Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas to the Mississippi River. Known to the early French as Rivière des Ark or d'Ozark, the 1,450-mile river derived its present-day name from the Arkansas Indians who lived along its banks. Hernando de Soto became the first European to explore the river on his journey into the Southwest in 1541. The French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette reached its mouth in 1673, in their search for a river "coming in from California on the southern sea." The Arkansas Post (in present-day southeastern Arkansas), established in 1686 by Henry de Tonti, was the first permanent settlement in the Arkansas River region, and the early history of the river centers around the post.
During the eighteenth century, the headwaters of the Arkansas were in Spanish territory. In 1696, the Spanish explorer Uribarri applied the name "Rio Napestle" to the upper Arkansas, a name the Spanish continued to use until the nineteenth century. The 1819Adams-Onís Treaty between the United States and Spain made the Arkansas River west of the 100th meridian a part of the western boundary of the United States. The name "Arkansas," which had applied only to lower reaches of the stream, was carried westward by American traders and trappers and succeeded in replacing the name "Rio Napestle," or "Napeste."
The Arkansas River was a highway for the French and Spanish. In the nineteenth century, it was navigable with keelboats as far west as Grand River. By the early twentieth century, it had also become a source of water for farms, industries, and cities and the subject of conflicts among the various users of the river's waters.
Bibliography
Lecompte, Janet. Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: The Upper Arkansas, 1832–1856. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.
Lewis, Anna. Along the Arkansas. Dallas, Tex.: The Southwest Press, 1932.
Sherow, James Earl. Watering the Valley: Development along the High Plains Arkansas River, 1870–1950. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990.
—Anna Lewis/C. P.
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
a river that rises in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and flows southeast through Kansas and Oklahoma and through Arkansas to become a tributary of the Mississippi River
Synonym: Arkansas
The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. The Arkansas generally flows to the east and southeast, and traverses the states of
Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma,
and Arkansas.
At 1,469 miles (2,364 km) it is the sixth longest river in the United States[1], the second-longest tributary in the Mississippi-Missouri system, and the 45th longest river in the world . Its origin is in the Colorado Rockies in Lake County near Leadville, and its outlet is at the historic site of Napoleon, Arkansas. The Arkansas River drainage basin covers nearly 195,000 sq mi (505,000 km²). (See watershed maps: 1) In terms of volume, the river is smaller than both the Missouri and Ohio, with a mean discharge of 8,460 ft³/s (240 m³/s).
The Arkansas has three distinct characters in its long path through central North America.
At its headwaters the Arkansas runs as a steep mountain torrent through the Rockies in its narrow valley, dropping 4600 feet (1.4 km) in 120 miles (193 km). This section (including The Numbers, Brown's Canyon, and the Royal Gorge) sees extensive whitewater rafting in the spring and summer.
Below the Royal Gorge, at Cañon City, Colorado, the Arkansas River Valley widens and flattens markedly. Just west of Pueblo, Colorado, the river enters the Great Plains. Through the rest of Colorado, through Kansas, and through northern Oklahoma to Tulsa, it is a typical Great Plains riverway, with wide shallow banks, subject to seasonal flooding. Tributaries include the Cimarron River (flowing from northeastern New Mexico) and the Salt Fork Arkansas River.
Below Tulsa, and continuing to its mouth, the river is navigable by barges and large river craft thanks to a series of dams that turn it into reservoirs. (Above Tulsa, it is navigable only by small craft such as rafts, canoes, and kayaks.)
Water flow in the Arkansas River (as measured in central Kansas) has dropped from approximately 248 cubic feet per second (7 m³/s) average from 1944-1963 to 53 cubic feet per second (1.5 m³/s) average from 1984-2003, largely due to pumping of groundwater for irrigation in eastern Colorado and western Kansas.
Important cities along the Arkansas include Pueblo, Colorado; Wichita, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Little Rock, Arkansas.
The I-40 Bridge Disaster of May 2002 took place on I-40's crossing of the Arkansas River near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma.
The McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System begins at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa on the Verdigris River, and runs via an extensive Lock and Dam system to the Mississippi.
Through Oklahoma and Arkansas, dams artificially deepen and widen this modest sized river to build it into a commercially navigable body of water. From the mouth of the Verdigris until the McClellan-Kerr system moves over to the White River near Arkansas Post, the Arkansas sustains commercial barge traffic and offers passenger and recreational use and is little more than a series of reservoirs.
Many nations of Native Americans lived near or along the Arkansas in its 1450 mile (2334 km) stretch, but the first Europeans to see the river were members of the Coronado expedition on June 29, 1541. Also in the 1540s Hernando de Soto discovered the junction of the Arkansas with the Mississippi. The name "Arkansas" was first applied by Father Jacques Marquette, who called the river Akansa in his journal of 1673.
From 1819 the Adams-Onís Treaty set the Arkansas as part of the frontier between the United States and Spanish Mexico, which it remained until the annexation of Texas and Mexican-American War in 1846.
Later, the Santa Fe Trail followed the Arkansas through much of Kansas except for the Cimarron Cutoff from Cimarron, Kansas to Cimarron, New Mexico via Cimarron County, Oklahoma along the Cimarron River.
The Arkansas River, in central Colorado, provides some of the best brown trout fishing in the west. The Arkansas starts just north of Leadville Colorado. The first 150 miles of the river, from Leadville to Pueblo, is prime trout water. Conditions vary widely along this section so the river is broken up into 4 sections; Leadville to Buena Vista, Buena Vista to Salida, Salida to Canon City, Canon City to Pueblo. The Arkansas drops over 5000 feet in elevation over this 150 mile stretch from Leadville to Pueblo. Seasons are quite different on each of these sections. The Arkansas through Canon City may be experiencing Spring conditions, while the Leadville area is still full blown winter. Due to this sudden change in climate and elevation, fishing conditions vary depending on which section of the river you plan to fish, and at what time of year you plan to be there. The Arkansas boasts high catches of browns and rainbows to 20 inches. Browns dominate the fishery. [2]
Though many in the state of Kansas pronounce it as IPA: /ɑrˈkænzəz/ (as the city of Arkansas City, Kansas is pronounced), the most common pronunciation for the river is /ˈɑrkənsɔː/ (as the state of Arkansas is pronounced according to a state law passed in 1881[3]). People in the Southern United States pronounce it /ˈærkənsɔː/.
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Arkansas River". Read more |
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