Green River (Washington)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Green River is a 60-mile-long river in the state of Washington in the United States, arising in the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains south of I-90. The Green River provides drinking water for the city of Tacoma, Washington. The cities of Kent, Auburn and Tukwila and are all situated along the Green River. In the upper reaches, the river is renowned for its pristine, largely undeveloped, banks. These areas include numerous fishing, canoeing, and bathing sites. Efforts are currently underway to preserve its natural beauty, which, in the past decade, have resulted in the creation of several state parks in the Green River Gorge with cliffs rising sharply as much as 300 feet from the riverbed.
Downstream from the Green River Gorge is the half-mile wide Green River Valley, where farmland has been protected from development. An attempt to locate a bike trail along the valley walls has encountered fierce resistance from farmers. As a result, bikes must share the road with autos as it winds through the pastoral landscape.
The Green River emerges from the Green River Valley and enters the much larger Kent Valley at Auburn, Washington, which has been carved from meltwater in the last ice age and filled in by lahars from Mount Rainier. Here the river turns north, leaves farmland behind and enters a zone of unrelieved light-industrial and retail development. A public multiuse trail runs along the river through most of this valley.
Its name changes to Duwamish River where it once joined the Black River, just outside of Tukwila. (The Black River dried up when Lake Washington's water level fell with the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal.) The Duwamish empties into Elliott Bay in Seattle, Washington. Its industrialized estuary is known as the Duwamish Waterway.
The Green River is also infamous as the location where the first victims of the serial killer Gary Leon Ridgway were found. Although only a few bodies were found in the river, because they were the first victims, the unidentified killer was known as the "Green River Killer" until the arrest of Ridgway.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
Green River was also a grunge band founded in Washington during the early 1980s. Several of the members would later branch out to form other popular grunge bands, such as Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, and Mother Love Bone.
