Yukon River summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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

Yukon River, River system, northwestern North America. Its length, measured from the headwaters of the McNeil River in south-central Yukon, Can., is 1,980 mi (3,190 km), making it the third longest river and fourth longest river system in North America. It flows northwest across the Yukon border into the U.S. state of Alaska and then generally southwest across central Alaska to the Bering Sea. Its entire course of 1,265 mi (2,035 km) in Alaska is navigable. It attracted attention following the rich gold strikes in 1896, notably the Klondike gold rush on one of its Canadian tributaries, the Klondike River.

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,