Columbia River summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Columbia River.

Columbia River, River, southwestern Canada and northwestern U.S. Rising in the Canadian Rockies, it flows through Washington state, entering the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Ore.; it has a total length of 1,240 mi (2,000 km). It was a major transportation artery in the Pacific Northwest until the coming of the railroads. Development of the river began in the 1930s with construction of the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams, and within 50 years the entire river within the U.S. had been converted into a series of “stair steps” by a total of 11 dams. Its many hydroelectric power plants are basic to the power-generating network of the Pacific Northwest.

Rocky Mountains Summary

Rocky Mountains, mountain range forming the cordilleran backbone of the great upland system that dominates the western North American continent. Generally, the ranges included in the Rockies stretch from northern Alberta and British Columbia southward to New Mexico, a distance of some 3,000 miles

North America Summary

North America, third largest of the world’s continents, lying for the most part between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer. It extends for more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) to within 500 miles (800 km) of both the North Pole and the Equator and has an east-west extent of 5,000 miles. It

river Summary

River, (ultimately from Latin ripa, “bank”), any natural stream of water that flows in a channel with defined banks . Modern usage includes rivers that are multichanneled, intermittent, or ephemeral in flow and channels that are practically bankless. The concept of channeled surface flow, however,