River · Canada, United States
Columbia River
The Columbia River starts at Columbia Lake in British Columbia, Canada, and flows into the United States. It carries a huge amount of water and reaches the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Oregon.
Picture credit: A Stray Echo (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Mattsjc (CC BY 4.0) · Steven Pavlov (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Columbia River?
The river starts here: Columbia Lake, British Columbia, Canada.
It ends in the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Oregon.
Countries on the river: Canada, the United States.
The story behind it
The Columbia begins at Columbia Lake in British Columbia and then flows into the US state of Washington. On the border between Washington and Oregon it cuts through the Cascade Range in the steep Columbia River Gorge. The river got its name in 1792 from the ship Columbia Rediviva of the American captain Robert Gray. In 1805 the explorers Lewis and Clark paddled down the river towards the Pacific. Today fourteen dams stand on the main river. The biggest, Grand Coulee Dam, is 168 metres high and is the largest power station in the United States. But it has no fish ladder, so salmon can no longer swim past it. Long ago, about 10 to 16 million salmon swam up the river every year. Giant white sturgeons live here too. At the river mouth, the dangerous Columbia Bar has wrecked so many ships that it is called the 'Graveyard of Ships'.
Questions children ask
How long is the Columbia River?
The Columbia River is about 2 000 km long; some sources give about 1 950 km. It flows from Columbia Lake in Canada to the Pacific Ocean in the USA.
Where does the name Columbia come from?
In 1792 the American captain Robert Gray sailed into the river with his ship Columbia Rediviva. He named the river after his ship.
What is the biggest fish in the Columbia River?
The white sturgeon is the giant of the river. The longest one ever recorded measured about 6 metres, and it takes these fish 15 to 25 years to become adults.
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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