Arkansas River

Arkansas River
River
The lower part of the Arkansas River near Little Rock, Arkansas
Country United States
States Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas
Region Great Plains
Part of Mississippi River watershed
Tributaries
 - left Fountain Creek, Pawnee River, Little Arkansas River, Walnut River, Verdigris River, Neosho River
 - right Cimarron River, Salt Fork Arkansas River, Canadian River, Poteau River
Cities Pueblo, CO, Wichita, KS, Tulsa, OK, Muskogee, OK, Fort Smith, AR, Little Rock, AR, Pine Bluff, AR
Source Confluence of East Fork Arkansas River and Tennessee Creek
 - location Near Leadville, Rocky Mountains, Colorado
 - elevation 9,728 ft (2,965 m)
 - coordinates 39°15′30″N 106°20′38″W / 39.25833°N 106.34389°W / 39.25833; -106.34389 [1]
Mouth Mississippi River
 - location Franklin Township, Desha County, near Napoleon, Arkansas
 - elevation 108 ft (33 m) [1]
 - coordinates 33°46′30″N 91°04′15″W / 33.77500°N 91.07083°W / 33.77500; -91.07083Coordinates: 33°46′30″N 91°04′15″W / 33.77500°N 91.07083°W / 33.77500; -91.07083 [1]
Length 1,469 mi (2,364 km), West-east [2]
Basin 168,002 sq mi (435,123 km2) [3]
Discharge for Dardanelle, Arkansas, river mile 219.5 (river kilometer 353.3)
 - average 40,517 cu ft/s (1,147 m3/s) [4]
 - max 683,000 cu ft/s (19,340 m3/s)
 - min 1,207 cu ft/s (34 m3/s)
The Arkansas River flows through Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and its watershed also drains parts of Texas, New Mexico and Missouri.

The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's source basin lies in the western United States in Colorado, specifically the Arkansas River Valley, where the headwaters derive from the snowpack in the Sawatch and Mosquito mountain ranges. It then flows east into the Midwest via Kansas, and finally into the South through Oklahoma and Arkansas.

At 1,469 miles (2,364 km), it is the sixth-longest river in the United States,[5] the second-longest tributary in the Mississippi–Missouri system, and the 45th longest river in the world. Its origin is in the Rocky Mountains in Lake County, Colorado, near Leadville. In 1859, placer gold discovered in the Leadville area brought thousands seeking to strike it rich, but the easily recovered placer gold was quickly exhausted.[6] The Arkansas River's mouth is at Napoleon, Arkansas, and its drainage basin covers nearly 170,000 sq mi (440,300 km²).[3] In terms of volume, the river is much smaller than the Missouri and Ohio Rivers, with a mean discharge of roughly 41,000 cubic feet per second (1,200 m3/s).

The Arkansas from its headwaters to the 100th meridian west formed part of the U.S.-Mexico border from the Adams–Onís Treaty (in force 1821) until the Texas Annexation or Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Pronunciations

Name pronunciation varies by region. Many people in western states, including Kansas and Colorado, pronounce it /ɑːrˈkænzəs/ ar-KAN-zəs,[7] People in Oklahoma and Arkansas typically pronounce it /ˈɑːrkənsɔː/ AR-kən-saw, which is how the state is always pronounced according to a state law passed in 1881.[8]

Hydrography

The headwaters of the Arkansas near Leadville, Colorado

The Arkansas has three distinct sections in its long path through central North America. At its headwaters, the Arkansas runs as a steep fast-flowing mountain river through the Rockies in its narrow valley, dropping 4,600 feet (1.4 km) in 120 miles (193 km). This section supports extensive whitewater rafting, including The Numbers (near Granite, Colorado), Brown's Canyon, and 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, Kansas, and much of Oklahoma, it is a typical Great Plains riverway, with wide, shallow banks subject to seasonal flooding and periods of dwindling flow. Tributaries include the Cimarron River and the Salt Fork Arkansas River.

In eastern Oklahoma the river begins to widen further into a more contained consistent channel. To maintain more reliable flow rates, a series of large reservoir lakes have been built on the Arkansas and its intersecting tributaries including the Canadian, Verdigris, Neosho (Grand), Illinois, and Poteau rivers.[9] These locks and dams allow the river to be navigable by barges and large river craft downriver of Muskogee, Oklahoma, where the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System joins in with the Verdigris River.

Into western Arkansas, the river path works between the encroaching Boston and Ouachita Mountains, including many isolated, flat-topped mesas, buttes, or monadnocks such as Mount Nebo, Petit Jean Mountain, and Mount Magazine, the highest point in the state. The river valley then expands as it encounters much flatter land beginning just west of Little Rock, Arkansas. It continues eastward across the plains and forests of eastern Arkansas until it flows into the Mississippi River.

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 because of the pumping of groundwater for irrigation in eastern Colorado and western Kansas.

Important cities along the Arkansas River include Pueblo, Colorado, Garden City, Kansas, Dodge City, Kansas, Wichita, Kansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

The I-40 bridge disaster of May 2002 took place on I-40's crossing of Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma.

Allocation problems

Since 1902, Kansas has claimed Colorado takes too much of the river's water, resulting in a number of lawsuits before the U.S. Supreme Court that continue to this day,[10] generally under the name of Kansas v. Colorado. The problems over the possession and use of Arkansas River water by Colorado and Kansas led to the creation of an interstate compact or agreement between the two states.[10] While Congress approved the Arkansas River Compact in 1949,[10] the compact did not stop further disputes by the two states over water rights to the river.

The Kansas-Oklahoma Arkansas River Basin Compact was created in 1965 to promote mutual consideration and equity over water use in the basin shared by those states. It led to the Kansas-Oklahoma Arkansas River Commission, which was charged with administering the compact and reducing pollution. The compact was approved and implemented by both states in 1970, and has been in force since then.[9]

Inland waterway system with McClellan-Kerr Navigational Channel shown in red

Riverway commerce

The McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System begins at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa on the Verdigris River, enters the Arkansas near Muskogee, and runs via an extensive lock and dam system to the Mississippi River.

Through Oklahoma and Arkansas, dams artificially deepen and widen the river to build it into a commercially navigable body of water. From the mouth of the Verdigris, to the point downstream where the McClellan-Kerr system moves over to the White River near Arkansas Post in far eastern Arkansas, the Arkansas sustains commercial barge traffic and offers passenger and recreational use through what is often little more than a series of reservoirs.

The river in history

Devil's Punch Bowl falls, Grand Canyon of the Arkansas River in Colorado, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views

Many nations of Native Americans lived near, or along, the 1,450-mile (2334-km) stretch of the Arkansas River for thousands of years. The first Europeans to see the river were members of the Spanish Coronado expedition on June 29, 1541. Also in the 1540s, Hernando de Soto discovered the junction of the Arkansas with the Mississippi. The Spanish originally called the river Napeste.[9] "The name "Arkansas" was first applied by Father Jacques Marquette, who called the river Akansa in his journal of 1673. The Joliet-Marquette expedition travelled the Mississippi River from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin towards the Gulf of Mexico, but turned back at the mouth of the Arkansas River. By that time, they had encountered Native Americans carrying European trinkets, and feared confrontation with Spanish conquistadors.

Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe, a French trader, explorer and nobleman had led an expedition into what is now Oklahoma in 1718-19. His original objective was to establish a trading post near the present city of Texarkana, Arkansas, but he then extended his trip as far north as the Arkansas River (which he designated as the Alcansas). the explorer wrote that he and 9 other men, including three Caddo guides and 22 horses loaded with trade goods had come to a native settlement overlooking the river, where there were about 6,000 natives, who gave the strangers a warm welcome. La Harpe's party were honored with the calumet ceremony and spent ten days at this location. In 1988, evidence of a native village was discovered along the Arkansas River 13 miles (21 km) south of present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma. By then, the site was known as the Lasley Vore Site.[11] A team led by Dr. George H. Odell, an anthropology professor from the University of Tulsa, uncovered numerous artifacts that indicated the natives were members of the Wichita people, and that the European artifacts also found there were of the same time period. Dr. Odell concluded that this was most likely place that la Harpe met the natives he described.

In 1819, the Adams-Onís Treaty set the Arkansas as part of the frontier between the United States and Spanish Mexico. This continued until the United States annexed Texas after the Mexican-American War, in 1846. The treaty was made shortly after "Old Settler" Cherokees moved to near what became known as Webbers Falls on the Arkansas River. That area, then part of Arkansas Territory would become Indian Territory and later Oklahoma, was traditional territory of the Osage, leading to conflict and a treaty in 1828 but still unresolved by the time thousands of additional Cherokee refugees moved to the area during the Trail of Tears.[12][13]

On March 31, 1820, the Comet became the first steamboat to successfully navigate part of the Arkansas River, reaching a place called Arkansas Point, about 40 miles (64 km) above the confluence of the Arkansas and the Mississippi Rivers.[14]

Later, the Santa Fe Trail followed the Arkansas through much of Kansas, picking it up near Great Bend and continuing through to La Junta, Colorado, unless users elected to take the challenging Cimarron Cutoff in Cimarron, Kansas.[15]

In the 1880s, Charles "Buffalo" Jones, one of the cofounders of Garden City, Kansas, organized four irrigation companies to take water one hundred miles from the Arkansas River to cultivate 75,000 acres (300 km2) of land.[16] By 1890, water from the Arkansas was being used to irrigate more than 20×103 acres (8.1×103 ha) of farmland in Kansas. By 1910, irrigation projects in Colorado had caused the river to stop flowing in July and August.[17]

Flooding in 1927 severely damaged or destroyed nearly every levee downstream of Fort Smith, and led to the development of the Arkansas River Flood Control Association.[17] It also led to the Federal Government assigning responsibility of flood control and navigation on the Arkansas to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACOE).

Fly fishermen on the Arkansas River near Salida, Colorado

Angling

The headwaters of the Arkansas River in central Colorado have been known for exceptional trout fishing, particularly fly fishing, since the 19th century, when greenback cutthroat trout dominated the river.[18] Today, brown trout dominate the river, which also contains rainbow trout. Trout Unlimited considers the Arkansas one of the top 100 trout streams in America,[19] a reputation the river has had since the 1950s.[20] From Leadville to Pueblo, the Arkansas River is serviced by numerous fly shops and guides operating in Buena Vista, Salida, Cañon City and Pueblo. The Colorado Division of Wildlife provides regular online fishing reports for the river.[21][22]

A fish kill occurred on December 29, 2010, in which an estimated 100,000 freshwater drum lined the Arkansas River bank.[23][24] An investigation, conducted by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, found the dead fish "cover 17 miles of river from the Ozark Lock and Dam downstream to River Mile 240, directly south of Hartman, Arkansas."[24] Tests later indicated the likely cause of the kill was gas bubble trauma caused by opening the spillways on the Ozark Dam.[25]

The Arkansas River passing through Little Rock, Arkansas, as viewed from the north bank in North Little Rock
The Yancopin Bridge is the last crossing of the Arkansas River before it flows into the Mississippi River

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Arkansas River". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey. 1980-04-30. Retrieved 2010-09-20.
  2. ↑ "McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System (MKARNS)". History & Culture. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved 2010-09-20.
  3. 1 2 See watershed maps: 1 Archived October 27, 2004, at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ↑ "USGS Gage #07258000 on the Arkansas River near Dardanelle, AR (monthly flow data)". Water Resources of the United States. U.S. Geological Survey. Retrieved 2011-01-03.
  5. ↑ J.C. Kammerer (May 1990). "Largest Rivers in the United States". United States Geological Survey. Archived from the original on 21 March 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-05.
  6. ↑ "Chaffee County Colorado Gold Production". Westernmininghistory.com. 2007-02-13. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
  7. ↑ Random House Dictionary
  8. ↑ Stewart, George R. (1967). Names on the Land. Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 335–340.
  9. 1 2 3 O'Dell, Larry. Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. "Arkansas River. Archived 2013-05-30 at the Wayback Machine.
  10. 1 2 3 Kansas v. Colorado 514 U.S. 673 (1995), 185 U.S. 125 (1902)
  11. ↑ Odell, George H. "Lasley Vore Site." Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Accessed January 26, 2017.
  12. ↑ "Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828". Oklahoma State University Library. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  13. ↑ "A New Treaty" (PDF). Cherokee Phoenix. University of North Dakota. 1 (20). 1828-07-09. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  14. ↑ U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Little Rock District/ Mission/Navigation. Accessed June 2, 2017.
  15. ↑ National Park Service
  16. ↑ Charles Jesse "Buffalo" Jones exhibit, Finney County Historical Museum, Garden City, Kansas
  17. 1 2 "History of the Arkansas River (1540 to 2000)". South Central Service Cooperative. 2017. Accessed June 4, 2017.
  18. ↑ Harris, William C. (September 1892). "The Trouts of Colorado and Utah". The American Angler. XXI (12): 515–528.
  19. ↑ Ross, John (2005). Trout Unlimited's Guide to America's 100 Best Trout Streams. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press. pp. 241–243. ISBN 1-59228-585-6.
  20. ↑ Campbell, Duncan (1960). 88 Top Trout Streams of the West. Newport Beach, CA: Western Outdoors. pp. 64–65.
  21. ↑ Bartholomew, Marty (1998). Fly Fisher's Guide to Colorado. Belgrade, MT: Wilderness Adventures Press. pp. 38–49. ISBN 978-1-885106-56-8.
  22. ↑ Colorado Division of Wildlife Fishing Reports Archived March 7, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  23. ↑ "Experts Close In On What Killed Fish - NW Arkansas News Story - KHBS NW Arkansas". KHBS. January 3, 2011. Archived from the original on 11 January 2011. Retrieved 4 January 2011.
  24. 1 2 "Arkansas River Fish Kill Investigation Continues". Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. 3 January 2011. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
  25. ↑ "Gas Bubble Trauma likely cause of fish kills". Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
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