Key facts
- Country
- United States
- State
- Kansas
- Location
- Junction City, Kansas
- Coordinates
- 39°03′35″N 96°48′04″W / 39.05972°N 96.80111°W / 39.05972; -96.80111
- Elevation
- 1,041 ft (317 m)
- Mouth
- Missouri River
- Length
- 148 mi (238 km)
- Basin size
- 60,114 sq mi (155,690 km )
- Average
- 7,240 cu ft/s (205 m /s)
- Minimum
- 353 cu ft/s (10.0 m /s)
- Maximum
- 133,172 cu ft/s (3,771.0 m /s)
- Left
- Republican River , Big Blue River , Delaware River
- Right
- Smoky Hill River , Wakarusa River
via Wikipedia infobox
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Kansas River, also known as the Kaw, is a meandering river in northeastern Kansas in the United States. It is potentially the southwestern most part of the Missouri River drainage, which is sometimes in turn the northwesternmost portion of the extensive Mississippi River drainage. Its two names both come from the Kanza (Kaw) people who once inhabited the area; Kansas was one of the anglicizations of the French transcription Cansez ( IPA: [kɑ̃ze]) of the original kką:ze. The city of Kansas City, Missouri, was named for the river, as was later the state of Kansas.
The river valley averages 2.6 miles (4.2 km) in width, with the widest points being between Wamego and Rossville, where it is up to 4 miles (6.4 km) wide, then narrowing to 1 mile (1.6 km) or less in places below Eudora and De Soto. Much of the river's watershed is dammed for flood control, but the Kansas River is generally free-flowing and has only minor obstructions, including diversion weirs and one low-impact hydroelectric dam.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Kansas River” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
On the map
2 mapped locations