River · Haiti
Artibonite River
The Artibonite is the longest river of Haiti and of the whole island it shares. It comes down from the central mountains and flows into the Gulf of Gonâve in the Caribbean Sea.
Picture credit: Kendra Helmer, USAID (Public domain) · Sperlens saintilus (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Sperlens saintilus (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Artibonite River?
The river starts here: Central mountains of the island of Hispaniola.
It ends in the Gulf of Gonâve, Caribbean Sea.
Countries on the river: Haiti.
The story behind it
The Artibonite starts in the mountains of the neighbouring country and crosses the border into Haiti, so two states share the same water and must agree on how to use it. Its wide valley is the rice bowl of Haiti: green paddy fields stretch to the hills, and farmers lead water into them through small channels dug by hand. Women carry bundles of harvested rice on their heads to the road. Behind a large dam further upstream, a reservoir makes electricity for towns far away. The river can be unfair: in dry months it shrinks and wells sink low, while after a tropical storm it turns into a brown flood that swallows fields and roads in hours. Egrets pick their way through the paddies, and mango trees shade the villages along the banks.
Questions children ask
How long is the Artibonite River?
The Artibonite is about 321 km long in total. Roughly 253 km of that lie in Haiti, where it is the longest river of the country.
Which country does the Artibonite River flow through?
Here it is counted as the river of Haiti, where most of its course and its big valley lie. Its headwaters rise on the other side of the island's central mountains.
Where does the Artibonite River flow into?
It empties into the Gulf of Gonâve, a wide bay of the Caribbean Sea. Its mouth is flat and muddy, with fishing boats pulled up on the sand.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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