This is an adaptation for the Web of a post I made to the Stumpers List in July, 1997, which was itself an adaptation of a list I compiled for our library a few years before that. It's LONG: the printout will be 10 pages, give or take a page or two (it depends on the settings on your particular computer).
CAVEAT: I have not mentioned every
north-flowing river in the world, and I acknowledge that the list has a
definite bias, radiating out from the Western Pennsylvania/West Virginia
area where I'm from to the United States as a whole and then to North America
generally. Since the list is already so long, I really do not care
to add any more rivers unless by some chance I've missed a really important
one. (Do e-mail me at lfundis@weir.net
, though, if you think there's one that is important enough to be added.)
Nonetheless, there are a good many rivers listed here from every continent,
except Antarctica, as explained later.
RIVERS
THAT FLOW NORTH
by Lois Aleta Fundis
Reference Librarian, Mary
H. Weir Public Library
last revised July 28,
2008
"To
many Americans . . . , north is the wrong way for a river to flow,
which leads to geographic confusion."
--
Angus
Phillips, "Simple Gifts of the Shenandoah", National
Geographic, December
1996
From time to time, the library gets questions about rivers that flow north. There are many more of these than you might think.
The whole idea of rivers flowing north seems backwards to many people. Most maps have north at the top, so that rivers which flow toward that direction seem to be flowing upward, against nature. And even in an era where traveling by river is uncommon we speak of "downriver" and "upriver", and we know that "upriver" (or "up the creek") means against the current, while downriver, with the current, is much easier going. So for "upriver" to be south of somewhere on a river that's flowing north really seems illogical, if you have the "north on top" map in mind. Still, consider this: the Niagara River flows north, from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. Is the water at Niagara Falls going "up"?
Also keep in mind that north-on-top maps are purely a convention, albeit one practiced since at least the Middle Ages; there can be and occasionally are maps that put other points of the compass at the top. On a map with south at the top, for example, the Nile and the Monongahela would seem to flow "down" in a manner that would seem normal, and the Mississippi would flow "up".
The Earth is spherical, and so no direction is really more "up" or "down" than any other, no matter where you are on the planet. And water (from which rivers are made, of course) cannot flow "up". Water flows in only one direction: down. The important thing to remember is that to a river, or more precisely to the drops of water that make up the river, "down" has nothing to do with compass points -- with latitude or longitude -- only with altitude. Water flows from higher altitudes to lower ones, and the river's channel has to be steep enough to overcome not only gravity and inertia, but also friction between water currents. Otherwise, you get a lake.
"Down" can therefore be in any compass direction, and most rivers wind around in all of them to one degree or another in what are called "meanders" -- the very word comes from a river, the Maiandros (now Menderes) in Asia Minor, now the nation of Turkey, that was notorious to the ancient Greeks for winding around. And most rivers flow neither north nor south, but east or west, or southeast or southwest, or northeast or northwest, and few of them flow in a straight course for long; they all meander to some extent. As far as the water is concerned, though, all rivers flow in only one direction: down.
Here is the most meandering river I could find a picture of. It's the Sebaskachu River in central Labrador; the photo is from the Terrain Sciences Division of Natural Resources Canada. (There's an even better picture of the meanders at http://www.geosurv.gov.nf.ca/images/minjpg/73_2.jpg!) Unfortunately for the purposes of this list, the Sebaskachu's main direction is east and a bit south, not north!
Probably some of these loops are flowing north, though. The atlases I have access to aren't detailed enough to show the meanders. But some rivers loop around and meander in larger loops that do show on maps. For a good example of a large, famous river that loops around in all sorts of directions, look closely at a map of the Ohio River, which flows mainly west-southwest for 981 miles from Pittsburgh until it meets the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. But during that route, you can see it head north-northwest from Pittsburgh to East Liverpool, and loop north again a few times -- near Marietta, Ohio, a bit farther down near Point Pleasant, W.Va., and still further along between Huntington, W.Va. and Portsmouth, Ohio. In fact it continues roughly northwest to Cincinnati, and doesn't take a more southerly direction again until the Indiana border; there are more such loops between Kentucky and Indiana, too.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center has a site, "Is it true that there are few rivers that flow north toward the sea?", which is one of the few other sites I have found that discuss this question. In addition to the points I've already mentioned, NASA notes that
Surprisingly, four of the world's ten longest rivers flow generally in
a northern direction. The Nile in Africa, the Ob-Irtysh and the Lena
in Eurasia and the Mackenzie-Peace in North America. An argument
can be made that there could be more north-flowing rivers than there
are rivers flowing in other directions. Since the center of the continent
of Antarctica is positioned near the South Pole, and the ice here is
almost two miles thick, if it began to melt, the meltwater would have
to move to the north to reach the sea. There's no land at the North
Pole (except for that little island where Santa lives), and so the balance
would favor north-flowing rivers.
THE CONTEST QUESTION
In July, 1993, a Pittsburgh-based supermarket chain which operates a store in Weirton ran a contest featuring questions on American history and geography, so that its customers would learn more about our country. This is a laudable goal. However, one question read as follows:
"There are three rivers in the United States that flow north, one is the St. John's River (FL), another is the Willamette River (OR), what is the third?"
Overlooking the run-on sentence, the fact remains that there are many more than three rivers that flow north, even if you limit it to rivers in the United States. Searching through maps, books on rivers, and the "Geographic Names" list in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary led to a fairly lengthy list. (In fact this question somewhat resembles the riddle about the third word that ends in -gry.) Thus the problem became, since there are quite a few more than three such rivers, which was the "correct" answer?
And the answer is . . . the Monongahela River.
We determined this in three ways:
- The "Mon" (as most folks in our area call it) is the "local favorite", the best nearby example of a north-flowing river. The Mon flows from West Virginia through Morgantown, crosses the Mason-Dixon line and continues northward to Pittsburgh, where it joins the Allegheny to become the Ohio River. Since the contest was from a Pittsburgh-based company, it seemed likely that this was the one they meant.
- The Mon, winding as it is, flows more directly straight north than even the two mentioned in the question.
- Last but not least, we called the headquarters of the supermarket chain and asked them which one they were looking for!
Downtown Pittsburgh as seen from
Mount Washington after a flood.
The Monongahela is in front, coming
in from the right side; the Allegheny is coming in from the top center;
Three Rivers Stadium is at center
left.
The muddy floodwater of the Mon
shows how the two rivers meet at the Point to form the Ohio.
In the meantime, we
had discovered quite a few
OTHER NORTH-FLOWING
RIVERS IN THE UNITED STATES
(Note that this list does not include
streams named "Creek", "Run", etc., only those named "River".
There are quite a few more creeks, runs, and so on flowing north, too.
Since local opinions differ and what might be only a "creek" in one part
of the country could be considered a "river" in others, this very terminology
does not help create a complete list. However, it's somewhat built into
the original question, so I decided to continue using it as a limiting
factor.)
More North-flowing
Rivers, in Alphabetical Order:
Big Horn
(WY and MT), near which General Custer met his doom
Hawaii has
several north-flowing rivers. Two
of the most northerly flowing ones are the Hanalei
and the Wailua, both on the north shore of Kauai.
Other rivers that flow
northerly but not necessarily due north
Rivers partly in Canada
that flow north:
In northern Vermont there
are so many rivers that flow into Canada and the St. Lawrence that Howard
Frank Mosher called a novel about that region Where
the Rivers Flow North. It was later made into a movie
starring Michael J. Fox.
Puerto Rico has at least one
north-flowing river interesting enough to add to the list -- the Arecibo
River, known in Spanish as the Río Grande de Arecibo,
flows for about 40 miles in western Puerto Rico from the Cordillera
Centra northl to the Atlantic Ocean; it's mouth is just east of the town
of Arecibo. South of the town is the great Arecibo
radiotelescope.
At least two northerly-flowing
rivers begin in Mexico and end in the United States. The
San
Pedro begins near Cananea, in the state of Sonora, and flows north
and slightly west to the Gila River in Arizona. The Santa Cruz
also begins near the border, loops south into Sonora for a little, and
flows north and northwest through Tucson and into the Gila near Phoenix.
These two, like other rivers in desert areas around the world, appear dry
much of the time, but fill with water when it rains (and it does rain sometimes,
even in deserts), and they can even flood after heavy rainfall. "However,
water always flows beneath their sandy beds," according to the World
Book Encyclopedia article on Arizona.
Big
Sandy (KY and WV)
Carson
(NV)
Cuyahoga
(OH) -- starts flowing SW but makes a U-turn to flow north into Lake
Erie at Cleveland; its source
is farther north than its mouth!
Deschutes
(OR) -- just west of and straighter than the Willamette
Gallatin
(WY)
Genessee
(PA and NY) -- Its headwaters in northcentral Pennsylvania are just a few
miles from those of the Allegheny, northeast of Coudersport, Pa.
Pine Creek, a major tributary of the Susquehanna River, also starts nearby.
(One of my sisters lives in that area, which is how I knew about this.)
The Genessee flows north to Lake Ontario; the Allegheny soon detours north
briefly into New York State, then flows primarily south and southwest to
Pittsburgh, where it merges with the Monongahela to form the Ohio; but
Pine Creek flows south and southeast toward Chesapeake Bay.
John
Day (OR)
Jordan
(UT) -- flows N from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake (its namesake in
the Holy Land, however, flows south)
Licking
(KY)
Madison
(WY)
Medicine
Bow (WY)
Onionagon
(WI)
Oswego
(NY)
Owyhee
(ID and OR) -- winds around a lot but the general direction is more N than
anything else; named for 3 Hawaiians who wanted to see more of the world
only to be killed by Indians while part of an expedition to explore the
Snake River in 1819.
Powder
(WY and MT) -- begins flowing E but then goes N or NNE to the Yellowstone.
Sandusky
(OH)
Smoky
Hill (KS)
Snake
(ID,
OR and WA)
Vermilion
(OH)
Wallkill (NJ/NY). This flows north from the Kittatinny Valley in northern New Jersey, crosses the state line and flows into a stream called Rondout Creek, near Rosendale, New York, which then continues the northern direction to meet the Hudson River near Kingston, about 90 miles north of New York City. It is considered unusual for a "river" to flow into a "creek" -- and indeed such a thing is probably much rarer than the flowing-north aspect -- but distinctions between "river" and "creek" as a choice of nomenclature for streams by the early settlers of areas are beyond the control of this web page! And, oddly, "Kill" is an old Dutch word for "creek", according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. See the paragraph above about "creeks," "runs," etc. The Wallkill is one river that wasn't on my original list, but has been suggested by e-mail by quite a few people from that area, so I've finally added it!)
Walker
(NV)
White
River of South Dakota
Withlacoochee
River (FL)
(this is a judgment call
in some cases, I'll admit):
Maumee
(IN, OH)
Cheyenne
(SD)
Clark
Fork (MT and ID)
Fox
(WI) -- flows into Lake Michigan at Green Bay
Guyandotte
(WV)
Kanawha
(WV)
Kentucky
(guess)
San
Joaquin (CA)
St.
Marys (FL/GA border)
Lamar
(MT)
Salinas
(CA)
Saranac
(NY)
Niagara
(New
York State and Ontario), including, of course, Niagara
Falls
Pend Oreille. This river -- which according to the Columbia Gazetteer of North America is sometimes spelled "Pend d'Oreille" and is sometimes considered part of the Clark Fork River (though the Clark Fork seems to be the stream before it enters the Pend Oreille Lake) -- begins at northwest corner of the Pend Oreille Lake in Idaho, flows west into Washington state, then north into British Columbia, and west again just north of the U.S.-Canadian border, to meet the Columbia River. This has little or no effect on the Columbia's path, which continues south into the United States to eventually become the Washington-Oregon state line, finally flowing west to the Pacific Ocean. Like the Wallkill, the Pend Oreille is one river that was not on my original list, but has been suggested by e-mail by so many readers that I've added it.)
Red
River of the North (Minnesota, North Dakota, Manitoba)
Yukon
(British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Alaska)
St.
Lawrence (New York State, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick) -- mostly
flows northeast connecting the Great Lakes to the ocean
Burg
Gutenfels (now a hotel), on the Rhine near Kaub, Germany.
NORTH-FLOWING RIVERS AROUND THE WORLD
Every continent has north-flowing rivers except Antarctica, and it would except for the ice-cap which covers the entire continent. You might want to stretch the point and consider the glaciers as rivers of ice, which flow north, away from the center of the continent at the South Pole, toward the oceans.
The oceans themselves contain currents, and the North Atlantic Drift, part of the Gulf Stream, flows north-northeast from the Caribbean to the coast of western Europe, bringing enough warm air and water along the way that there are places on the coasts of Ireland and Scotland where palm trees can grow!
In fact, if you look hard enough, it might even be true that most countries have north-flowing rivers. Certainly many do. It would be nearly impossible to list every north-flowing river in the world, but here are some from each continent.
North America (outside U.S.):
In Canada,
in addition to the rivers listed above that are partly in the United States,
there are many more north-flowing rivers that flow into lakes, Hudson Bay,
the Atlantic or Arctic Oceans, etc.
The most famous
is probably the Mackenzie River, which flows north-by-northwest from the
Great Slave Lake through the Northwest Territories to the Beaufort Sea,
which is part of the Arctic Ocean (so it may be more accurate to say that
the Mackenzie flows north in summer). This lake, one of the largest in
Canada, shares its name with the Slave River, which flows north from Lake
Athabasca to the Great Slave Lake; the native people of that area were
called the Slavey Indians. The Great Slave Lake also has other north-flowing
tributaries, including the Hay River and the Terhul River.
Athabasca
is a Cree Indian word for "where there are reeds". This names both
the lake and a river, the Athabasca River, which begins in Jasper National
Park, near the border of British Columbia and Alberta, and flows north
by northeast through Alberta to Lake Athabaska. The Mackenzie-Slave-Athabasca
system is therefore actually a chain of north-flowing rivers and
lakes running over a thousand miles through the Canadian Rockies north
to the Arctic.
Mexico also has more north-flowing rivers than those it shares with the United States, though a few flow into bodies of water shared with the U.S., such as the Rio Conchos, which flows into the Rio Grande. In southern Mexico there are other rivers that flow north into the Bay of Campeche (part of the Caribbean Sea), such as the Crijalva. In fact, some of Mexico's southern border is made of north-flowing rivers: the Usumacinta,whose mouth is near that of the Crijalva, forms part of the border with Guatemala; and the Hondo, which flows into the Gulf of Honduras, forms part of the border with Belize. In addition, some of these rivers also have north-flowing tributaries; for example, the Lacantum is a tributary of the Usumacinta.
In South America,
there are many rivers that flow into the Amazon from the south, such as
the Beni, Jurua, Tapajos, Xingu, and Tocantins, to name only a few.
There are also north-flowing rivers in the northern part of South America
that flow into the Caribbean and Atlantic.
The Orinoco River
in Venezuela flows in a clockwise arc, starting out northwest, then north,
then east-northeast. And some of its tributaries, such as the Cuchivero,
Caura, and Paragua flow north. Other north-flowing rivers in that area
are the Unare and Cuyuni, the Magdalena
in Colombia, the Berbice and Essequibo rivers in Guyana, the Corantyne
or Corantin on the border between Guyana and Suriname, the Mana in French
Guyana.
As in Canada, many of the north-flowing
rivers in Siberia (the part of Russia in Asia)
flow into the Arctic Ocean. The Ob, Yenisey, Lena and Kolyma flow into
the Arctic (again, one ought to add "in summer" since in winter they freeze
over), but there are others including the Nadym, Yana, Indigirka, Omolon,
Vitim, and Irtysh. Like many of the rivers mentioned for North America,
some of these rivers wind around quite a bit; the Lena, for one,
starts out flowing north, then northeast, then north again. In the European
part of Russia there are north-flowing rivers too, including the Pechora
and Severnaja.
Other parts
of Asia also have north-flowing rivers. The Amu Darya flows into the Aral
Sea (or what's left of it) from Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
And the Sakarva and Kizilirmak flow through Asia Minor (Turkey) to the
Black Sea.
And the Ganges
in India has several north-flowing tributaries; some, such as the Chambal
and Betwa, flow north into the Yamuna (also spelled Jumna) which flows
east-northeast and meets the Ganges at Varanasi, a holy city in the Hindu
religion.
In Europe, there's the Rhine, which flows north from Switzerland between France and Germany past the part of the world the Fundis family originally came from, though it veers northwest toward the Netherlands shortly past there. On the other side of Germany is the Elbe, which flows into the Baltic Sea, and with its tributary the Neisse has formed Germany's border with Poland since the end of World War II. Other north-flowing rivers in Germany include the Ems, Uecker, Spree, Necker, Weser, and Warnow; there are many more. Other north-flowing rivers in Poland include the Vistula and the Warta.
Not to be outdone,
Africa has the longest and most famous of all, the
Nile -- not merely the most famous or longest north-flowing
river, but the longest and very possibly the most famous and most historic
river in any direction, anywhere on Earth. The Encyclopædia
Britannica calls it "the father of African rivers". The Nile's
origins, once mysterious, begin south of the Equator: it starts from Lake
Victoria and then flows north from Tanzania for over 4,000 miles (35 degrees
of latitude, nearly a fifth of the entire distance from the North to South
Poles!) through Uganda, the Sudan and of course Egypt to the Mediterranean
Sea. Southern parts of the Nile have different names -- the Victoria
Nile, the Albert Nile, the Mountain Nile, the White Nile -- but are all
the same river, and all flow primarily north. Several of the Nile's
tributaries also flow north, including the Barat al Azraq (also called
the Blue Nile), the Bahr al Jaraf (or Giraffe River), and the Atbarah River.
And like all rivers, the Nile meanders; in the Sudan it takes some S curves
and for a couple of hundred miles flows primarily southwest until it turns
northward again. The Nile is typical of many rivers in other ways,
too, in that it has cataracts (waterfalls), and has been dammed (the Aswan
High Dam, forming Lake Nasser in southern Egypt) to prevent flooding.
Ironically, in ancient times it was the Nile's annual flooding that, by
providing water in what was otherwise a desert, enabled farming along its
banks, and thus the growth of the ancient Egyptian civilization.
See a map of the Nile
at http://www.nilebasin.org/nilemap.htm.
The
Nile Delta is "the prototype of all deltas" and contains the most fertile
soil in Africa, says the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Here in the U.S., when we think of a river delta we think of the Mississippi Delta in Louisiana, but the mouth of the Nile was the first to be called a "delta", as long ago as the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th Century B.C., over a hundred years before the city of Alexandria was built there and became the seat of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, the family of Greco-Egyptian rulers most famous for their last queen, Cleopatra, and for founding the ancient world's largest library. The name "delta" comes from D, the Greek triangle-shaped letter named "delta" (from the Phoenician daleth or "door", the origin of our letter D) and refers to the area of land built up by sediment or silt deposited by the river near the river's mouth. Many large rivers have deltas, and most deltas are triangular ("deltoid") in shape. (The deltoid muscles in the human body are also so named because they are triangular.) |
There are other north-flowing rivers in Africa too, of course, including several tributaries of the Congo.
Australia has many north-flowing rivers on its northern shore. Some of these are dotted lines on atlases, which means they have flowing water only in the rainy season. A few that are solid-blue lines, and thus wet all year around, are the Drysdale, Victoria, Fitzroy, King Edward, Durack, Daly and Ord. The island of Tasmania also has north-flowing rivers, the Massey, Macquarie and Tamar.
That's all I'm going to list for
now. There are also north-flowing rivers in Japan,
Madagascar, Sarawak ... why not get out an atlas and find a
few yourself?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Geographic Names", [Merriam]-Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, pages 1433-1518.
Kolenkow, Robert J. et al. Physical Geography Today: A Portrait of a Planet (Del Mar, Calif.; CRM Books, 1994), especially chapter 12, "Flowing Water and Its Work." (Most of the information on what makes rivers flow at all is from this.)
Phillips, Angus. "Simple Gifts of the Shenandoah." Photographs by Vincent J. Musi. National Geographic, December 1996 (vol. 190, no. 6), pp. 38-57 (especially p. 46, which includes the quote above).
Rolling Rivers: An Encyclopedia of America's Rivers, Richard A. Bartlett, ed. (New York, McGraw-Hill, c1984)
Stumpers
List archives, mostly from March, 1997 -- special thanks
to T.F. Mills, Ron Schaeffer, Carolyn Caywood, Kate Cummings, David Ibbetson,
and particularly Patricia Beuerlein, who contributed a list as long
as the one I already had but mostly of non-U.S. rivers. In
March, 1997, Elaine Powell Hooker, Reference Librarian at the Spartanburg
County Public Library in Spartanburg, SC, was asked a "rivers that flow
north" question and on March 12 posted the question to the
Stumpers List. Stumpers is an e-mail list primarily for reference
librarians. In the course of the list discussion, I posted an earlier
version of this list and other librarians mentioned others. Therefore,
some of the rivers mentioned above, especially those from outside
the U.S., were suggested by these other members of the list or were found
in atlases while looking up rivers mentioned by them
Thanks to Andy
Behrens for reminding me of the novel Where
the Rivers Flow North.
Additional thanks
to Ted Nesbitt for helping me locate the Sebaskachu in the atlases and
determining its direction (I was hoping it flows north, but no such luck)
and to Phalbe Henriksen for pointing out that the St. Johns River does
not have an apostrophe -- although since I believe the original contest
question spelled it with the apostrophe, I let it stand in that quotation.
Thanks to Jennifer Monroe for bringing to my attention the Withlacoochee River of central Florida.
Thanks to Ronald Beall who mentioned the north-flowing section of the Missouri.
Other sources consulted, especially to verify facts about individual rivers:
In conclusion:
"Like a river that don't know where it's flowin'
I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin'."
-- Bruce Springsteen, "Hungry Heart", The River
(1980)