Bill Williams River
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The Bill Williams River is a tributary of the Colorado River, approximately 40 mi (64 km) long in western Arizona in the United States. It drains a rugged and remote area of the Sonoran Desert plateau east of the Colorado northwest of Phoenix, forming a green ribbon of an oasis as it crosses the desert.
It is formed in southern Mohave County, on the south side of Hualapai Mountains, approximately 40 mi (64 km) northwest of Wickenburg, by the confluence of the Big Sandy and Santa Maria rivers. It flows southwest through Alamo Lake, formed by the Alamo Dam, then west along the north side of the Buckskin Mountains. It joins the Colorado from the east in Lake Havasu, just upstream from Parker Dam, opposite the Colorado River Aqueduct, approximately 20 mi (32 km) southeast of Lake Havasu City.
Up until the 20th century the river's riparian habitat, like the nearby Colorado, contained extensive growths of cottonwood and willow trees, noted in the journals of John C. Fremont who explored the region in the middle 19th century. The construction of the Alamo Dam in 1968 eliminated the flooding cycles of the river and severely reduced the former riparian habitat along much of the river. A section of the former cottonwood-willow forest is found in the Bill Williams National Wildlife Refuge.
The river valley was inhabited by the Mohave and Chemehuevi tribes who used the willow reeds for basket-making. The river is named for Bill S. Williams, a mountain man who traveled through much of present-day Arizona in the early 1800s.
