Saint Joseph River

St. Joseph River near Newville in DeKalb County, Indiana.

Map of the Maumee River watershed showing the St. Joseph River.

Floodwall along St. Joseph River in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The St. Joseph River is a tributary of the Maumee River, approximately 100 mi (160 km) long, in southern Michigan, northwestern Ohio, and northeastern Indiana in the United States. It drains a primarily rural farming region in the watershed of Lake Erie. Along with the St. Joseph River of Lake Michigan, it is one of two rivers in the region that somewhat confusingly share the same name but run in generally opposite directions.

Origin

At the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, the glacier's Erie Lobe retreated toward the northeast leaving large debris deposits called moraines. The St. Joseph formed as a meltwater channel between the north limbs of two of these moraines, the Wabash Moraine on the west and the Fort Wayne Moraine on the east. At that time it joined the St. Marys River to drain into the Wabash River. Later, the shrinkage of Glacial Lake Maumee, the ancestor of modern Lake Erie, brought about the opening of the modern Maumee River, which captured the flow of the St. Joseph and the St. Marys, causing the St. Marys to reverse its course to meet the flow of the St. Joseph almost head-on.

The St. Joseph today

The St. Joseph rises out a group of small lakes in southern Michigan, in Hillsdale County approximately 5 mi (8 km) southwest of Hillsdale. The headwaters are within 5 mi (8 km) of the those of the St. Joseph River of Lake Michigan. It flows initially southeast, then turns to the southwest to flow across the northwestern corner of Ohio past Montpelier. It enters De Kalb County in northeastern Indiana, flowing southwest past Saint Joe and into the city of Fort Wayne, where it meets the St. Marys River to form the Maumee.

See also

• List of Indiana rivers
• List of Michigan rivers
• List of Ohio rivers
• USS St. Joseph's River, a World War II era US Navy vessel named after this river.

References

• Water Resource Availability in the Maumee River Basin, Indiana, Water Resource Assessment 96-5, Indianapolis:Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water, 1996, p. 46.
• Sunderman, Jack A., "The Three Faces of Cedar Creek," ACRES Quarterly, v. 39, no. 4 (Fall 2000), pp. 6-7.

External links

• EPA St. Joseph Watershed Profile
• St. Joseph River Watershed Initiative
• Maumee River Basin Commission
• Maume Valley Heritage Corridor