Top 10 Largest Rivers in The United States

#1: Missouri River (2,341 miles)

At 2,341 miles, the Missouri River begins at the confluence of Montana’s Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers, coursing eastward through canyon walls and prairie grasslands before merging with the Mississippi at St. Louis. Its headwaters in the Rockies tumble over tumbling rapids and ancient volcanic basalt, creating prime whitewater runs near Wolf Creek. Downstream, the Great Falls cascade—once portaged by Lewis and Clark in 1805—still echo their pioneering footsteps along the National Historic Trail. Fort Peck Reservoir, one of the world’s largest man-made lakes, tames wild spring floods, generating hydroelectric power and irrigating vast cereal fields in North Dakota.

Between the dam and Lake Oahe, braided channels cradle sandbar camping sites where anglers hook paddlefish and catfish, while bald eagles perch in riverside cottonwoods. South Dakota’s badlands, strewn with Hell Creek dinosaur fossils, flank the river’s banks—a reminder that this “Big Muddy” has carried life here since prehistoric times. Further downstream, Omaha’s Lewis & Clark Landing hosts river festivals and heritage boat cruises; farmers channel floodwaters through restored wetlands to filter sediment and nourish migratory waterfowl. Crossing Nebraska’s Sandhills, the Missouri meanders past ancient dune-stabilizing grasses, supporting cattle ranches and rare piping plovers.

As the river forms state borders between Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois, industrial ports hum with grain barges bound for the Gulf. Yet hidden oxbows, like the Price Island lagoon near Kansas City, shelter river otters and spring wildflowers—quiet refuges from commercial traffic. Confluence Park in St. Louis commemorates where Missouri and Mississippi unite, their quarter-mile across currents a symbolic meeting of nature and history. Restoration efforts now breach levees to revive floodplain forests, proving that even a heavily engineered river can regain some of its honest, untamed spirit.

#2: Mississippi River (2,320 miles)

Flowing 2,320 miles from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi weaves a tapestry of American life. Its birth at Itasca State Park—a shallow outflow barely finger-deep—belies the river’s later might as “Old Man River.” In Minneapolis, St. Anthony Falls once powered the city’s flour mills; today, the Stone Arch Bridge crosses the river’s heart, connecting urban parks to restored rapids. Further south, the Driftless Area’s tributaries join the main stem, their spring creeks supplying trout and enriching the river’s biodiversity.

Approaching St. Louis, the Mississippi forms the state line with Illinois, its wide channel dotted with sandbars where campfire smoke curls at dusk. The river powered steamboat commerce in the 19th century, and the recreated paddlewheel Nathaniel B. Bibb still cruises these waters, narrating Civil War-era tales of blockade runners and river forts.

Downriver, the Yazoo Delta’s bayous and backwaters give rise to blues music in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where juke joints echo with guitar riffs that channel the river’s rhythm. Near Memphis, the riverfront promenade hosts riverboat casinos and the Mississippi River Museum in Memphis, where vintage towboats and tugboats stand as relics of a bygone era.

In Louisiana, the river broadens into a bustling barge lane beneath the Crescent City Connection bridges. At New Orleans, the river’s crescent-shaped bend cradles the French Quarter’s levee-lined streets, where jazz emerged in alleyway clubs. Below the city, the junction with the Atchafalaya at the Old River Control Structure is an engineering marvel preventing the Mississippi from changing course toward the Atchafalaya Basin. Finally, at Head of Passes, the river splinters into seven passes, merging with Gulf tides to create one of the world’s largest deltas—wetlands teeming with shrimp boats, brown pelicans, and sprawling marshes that guard New Orleans against storm surges.

#3: Yukon River (1,979 miles)

The Yukon River, at 1,979 miles, begins in Canada’s Kluane Lake and plunges westward across Alaska to the Bering Sea. Its name—derived from the Gwich’in word for “great river”—reflects its significance to First Nations, who have fished salmon runs here for millennia. In Alaska’s interior, the river cuts through the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, where gold-rush cabins dot sandbars and mushing trails follow the frozen river each winter.

The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 brought stampeders down the Yukon from Dawson City; steamers churned upriver to supply remote camps, scarring the landscape with dredge piles still visible from bush planes. Today, guided river expeditions pass abandoned paddlewheelers and trappers’ cabins, while rubber rafts bounce over rocky shallows in remote canyons.

In spring, the river’s ice breakup creates hydraulic “ice dams” that surge into flows capable of flooding riverside villages. Koyukuk and Galena, indigenous communities along the banks, celebrate the annual fish harvest with subsistence festivals, sharing smoked salmon and stories of elders who paddled birch-bark canoes before steel engines arrived.

As the Yukon approaches the Bering Sea at the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, it fans into countless channels, creating one of North America’s largest river deltas—a vital staging ground for migratory waterfowl and nesting shorebirds. Beluga whales travel upstream during summer tides, and remote subsistence villages harvest clams and sea cucumbers in brackish tributaries.

#4: Rio Grande (1,885 miles in U.S.)

Although the Rio Grande spans 1,896 miles from Colorado’s San Juan Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 1,885 miles lie within U.S. borders, forming the border with Mexico for nearly 1,250 miles. Its headwaters flow from glacier-fed creeks near Creede, Colorado, through the narrow Rio Grande Gorge beneath towering basalt walls—a whitewater paradise for rafting guides who navigate Class V rapids to Taos.

South of Taos, the river enters New Mexico’s arid Mesilla Valley, where acequia irrigation ditches have carried snowmelt for community farms since Spanish colonial times. In Española, adobe churches stand beside cottonwoods on river terraces, marking centuries of cultural intersections between Pueblo, Hispanic, and Anglo settlers.

At El Paso–Ciudad Juárez, the river’s channel shrinks to a trickle under urban bridges, its bed often dry except during monsoon floods. Here, international efforts to restore riparian forests have planted thousands of cottonwood and willow seedlings to filter runoff and provide migratory bird habitat.

Downstream in Texas, the Rio Grande Valley’s lower course waters citrus orchards and sugarcane fields before expanding into the Laguna Madre estuary—a hypersaline coastal lagoon where wind-turbine farms tap constant sea breezes. At Port Isabel, the river meets the Gulf in Laguna Madre’s sheltered waters, giving rise to rich shrimp grounds and saltwater marshes that buffer tropical hurricanes.

#5: Colorado River (1,450 miles in U.S.)

Flowing 1,450 miles across seven U.S. states, the Colorado River begins at La Poudre Pass in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park and carves some of the world’s most dramatic canyons. At 277 miles, the Grand Canyon is its crowning masterpiece—an 18-mile gorge sculpted over six million years, visited by rafters who navigate roaring rapids beneath 1,000-foot sandstone walls.

Above Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powell floods tributary canyons, submerging rainbow-striped walls once visited by Ancestral Puebloans who left cliff-dwelling ruins now drowned beneath turquoise waters. At Lees Ferry, anglers fish for rainbow trout in the tailwater below Glen Canyon Dam, where constant cold flows mimic native stream conditions.

Downstream, the Colorado morphs into a series of managed reaches: the Middle Colorado pours through Cataract Canyon before meeting the Green River at the confluence dubbed “the meeting of the waters.” The Lower Colorado powers Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead—America’s largest reservoir by volume—storing water for 40 million people in Nevada, California, and Arizona.

In the river’s final stretch, salinity spikes beneath Imperial Dam, challenging agriculture in the Mexicali and Yuma valleys. Despite engineering marvels, the Colorado seldom reaches the Gulf of California today; water diversions have triaged flow to a few wetter years—forcing binational efforts to revive delta ecosystems and restore tidal marshes for endangered species.

#6: Arkansas River (1,469 miles)

At 1,469 miles, the Arkansas River starts in Colorado’s central Rockies near Leadville and flows southeast through Kansas’s flint hills, past Oklahoma’s bend of red-tesla bluffs, to the Arkansas Delta in southeastern Arkansas, where it merges with the Mississippi. Along its course, it supplies navigation via a series of locks and dams from eastern Oklahoma to the Mississippi.

In Wichita, the river’s revitalized downtown district boasts riverwalks and pedal-boat cruises, breathing life into once-neglected floodplain parks. Further downstream, the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System spans 445 miles of barge channels, integrating hydroelectric power and flood control with commercial traffic.

Historic sites along the Arkansas include Little Rock’s River Market District—where territorial trading posts once stood—and the 1915 Keystone Dam, whose towers frame mature bald cypress groves now harboring great blue heron rookeries.

#7: Columbia River (1,243 miles in U.S.)

Although stretching 1,243 miles within the United States (1,243 of its total 1,243 miles between Canada and the Pacific), the Columbia River begins at Columbia Lake in British Columbia, plunges through Washington’s North Cascades, and defines much of the Washington-Oregon border before reaching the Pacific near Astoria. Its name—gifted by American ship captain Robert Gray—honors exploration as much as commerce.

A series of dams, including the Grand Coulee and Bonneville, generates 44 percent of U.S. hydropower. Below Bonneville, salmon runs once in the millions splashed upstream; fish ladders now aid steelhead and Chinook, while hatcheries mitigate decades of blocked passages.

Scenic highlights include the Columbia River Gorge’s waterfall corridor—Bridal Veil and Multnomah Falls tumbling over basalt cliffs—and the Hanford Reach’s free-flowing stretch that supports the last wild salmon runs in the lower 48 states.

#8: Red River (1,290 miles in U.S.)

The Red River flows 1,290 miles from the Texas Panhandle’s Palo Duro Canyon region east to Shreveport–Bossier City, Louisiana, where it merges with the Atchafalaya and Mississippi. Named for its copper-toned waters colored by fine clay sediment, the river marked the 19th-century boundary between Spanish Texas and the Louisiana Purchase.

In north Texas, White Rock Lake and Lake Tawakoni harness portions of the river for Dallas’s water supply. Midway, the historic town of Wichita Falls grew around a natural limestone waterfall—since submerged by reservoir construction—where Native American tribes once gathered. At Shreveport, steamboat casinos line the riverfront, evoking era-of-steam nostalgia in neon excess.

#9: Snake River (1,078 miles in U.S.)

The Snake River spans 1,078 miles through Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, earning fame for its Hells Canyon stretch—the deepest river gorge in North America at over 7,900 feet. Its salmon-rich waters supported Shoshone and Nez Perce villages for centuries; Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery crossed its Snake Falls in 1805, narrowly avoiding rapids that later powered Lewiston’s flour mills.

Today, six dams regulate the Snake’s flow for irrigation in Idaho’s Treasure Valley and hydropower near the Oregon border. Recreation abounds: whitewater rafting in Hells Canyon, trout fishing in the Grande Ronde tributary, and hot springs tucked along backcountry access roads.

#10: Ohio River (981 miles)

Formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at Pittsburgh, the Ohio River flows 981 miles through or along the borders of six states to join the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. Its broad channel powered early western settlement, steamboat commerce, and the steel-mill boom in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

Historic river towns—like Marietta, Ohio; Wheeling, West Virginia; and Louisville, Kentucky—grew around river landings where flatboats delivered goods to New Orleans. Today, barges still transport coal, grain, and petroleum. The Ohio’s floodplains host riparian forests once logged for walnut and oak, and modern efforts reforest islands to enhance water quality and wildlife habitat.

These ten rivers—Missouri, Mississippi, Yukon, Rio Grande, Colorado, Arkansas, Columbia, Red, Snake, and Ohio—span over 13,000 miles of American terrain. Steeped in Indigenous heritage, exploration lore, industrial might, and ecological complexity, they continue shaping landscapes and livelihoods. From glacier-born headwaters to tidal deltas, each river tells a story of water’s power to cut through rock, sustain life, and carry human dreams downstream. Preserving their health ensures these great waterways remain the living backbone of a continent.