Missouri River | Facts, Map, & History (2024)

Missouri River, longest tributary of the Mississippi River and second longest river in North America. It is formed by the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers in the Rocky Mountains area of southwestern Montana (Gallatin county), U.S., about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) above sea level. The Missouri proper has a total course of 2,315 miles (3,726 km). Some sources, however, give the combined lengths of the Missouri proper and the Red Rock River (the upper course of the Jefferson River) of southwestern Montana as that of the Missouri River itself, instead of identifying it as a river system made up of both streams. The Missouri–Red Rock River system has a total length of some 2,540 miles (4,090 km), making it the third longest system in North America.

The Missouri first flows northward and northeastward (via Great Falls) through western Montana before turning eastward across the northern portion of the state. Shortly after entering western North Dakota, it begins to trend southeastward before continuing southward just south of Bismarck into northern and central South Dakota to Pierre, where it again begins to trend southeastward. Continuing through central and southern South Dakota, the river then forms a section of the South Dakota–Nebraska boundary, the Nebraska–Iowa boundary, the Nebraska–Missouri boundary, and the northern section of the Kansas–Missouri boundary. At Kansas City, Kansas, the river again turns to the east and, after flowing through Kansas City, Missouri, meanders eastward across west-central Missouri before heading southeastward again to Jefferson City. There it makes its final eastward turn, flowing until it joins the Mississippi River about 10 miles (16 km) north of St. Louis.

The river’s drainage basin occupies about 529,400 square miles (1,371,100 square km) of the Great Plains, of which 2,550 square miles (16,840 square km) are in southern Canada. The range of elevations within its basin is considerable: from some 14,000 feet (4,300 metres) above sea level in the Colorado Rockies near the Continental Divide to 400 feet (120 metres) where it joins the Mississippi. The flow of the Missouri and of most of its tributaries is exceedingly varied—the minimum flow being 4,200 cubic feet (120 cubic metres) per second and the maximum 900,000 cubic feet (25,500 cubic metres) per second. With unprotected slopes and violent fluctuations in flow, erosion and silting are major problems.

Chief tributaries include the Cheyenne, Kansas, Niobrara, Osage, Platte, and Yellowstone rivers, flowing in on the south and west sides, and the James and Milk rivers, entering from the north. Other tributaries are the Bad, Blackwater, Cannonball, Gasconade, Grand, Heart, Judith, Knife, Little Missouri, Moreau, Musselshell, and White rivers, which enter from the south and west. The Big Sioux, Chariton, Little Platte, Marias, Sun, and Teton rivers enter from the north and east.

The Missouri was named Peki-tan-oui on some early French maps and, later, Oumessourit; it has been nicknamed “Big Muddy” because of the amount of solid matter it carries in suspension. For millennia, the area around the upper Missouri River was home to Native American peoples such as the Blackfeet, Hidatsa, and Crow. The mouth of the river was first encountered by Europeans in 1673—by the French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet while they were canoeing down the Mississippi River. In the early 1700s French fur traders began to navigate upstream. The first exploration of the river from its mouth to its headwaters was made in 1804–05 during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. For many years commerce on the river was restricted to the fur trade, and the river was little used by the earliest American settlers moving west. The American Fur Company began to use steamers on the river in 1830. Steamboat traffic on the river reached its height in 1858 but began to decline in the following year with the completion of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railway to St. Joseph, Missouri.

For the first 150 years after settlement along the river, little was done to develop the Missouri as a useful waterway or as a source of irrigation and power. In 1944 the U.S. Congress authorized a comprehensive program for flood control and water resource development in the Missouri River basin. It envisioned a system of more than 100 dams and reservoirs on the Missouri and certain of its tributaries. Local flood protection, involving levees and bank stabilization, and a deeper river channel were provided on the Missouri itself from Sioux City, Iowa, to the Mississippi, a distance of 760 miles (1,220 km). By the time an even more ambitious plan—the Missouri River basin program called the Pick-Sloan plan—was adopted in the 1950s, channel maintenance had enabled commercial barge lines to begin operating on the Missouri in 1953. The major dams built on the Missouri were Fort Peck (near Glasgow, Montana), Garrison (North Dakota), and Gavin’s Point, Fort Randall, and Oahe (South Dakota). The Fort Peck Dam is one of the largest earthfill dams in the world. The entire system of dams and reservoirs has greatly reduced flooding on the Missouri and provides water to irrigate millions of acres of cropland along the main river and its tributaries. Hydroelectric installations along the river generate electricity for many communities along the river’s upper course.

In addition to the locations already mentioned, the other chief cities along the Missouri are Williston, North Dakota; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Omaha and Nebraska City, Nebraska; Atchison and Leavenworth, Kansas; and Columbia and St. Charles, Missouri. The river is not only of great value as a source of water and hydroelectricity, but it is also one of the country’s most important recreational resources. A segment of free-flowing river in north-central Montana is a federally designated national wild and scenic river, and the portion of the Missouri and its adjacent lands east of there to Fort Peck constitutes Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. In addition, much of the river along the South Dakota–Nebraska border is within Missouri National Recreational River, a facility under the jurisdiction of the U.S. National Park Service. There also are numerous state and local parks and recreational areas along the length of the river.