River · El Salvador
Lempa River
Lempa River is the longest river of El Salvador, in Central America. It begins in the mountains of Guatemala and empties into the Pacific Ocean near the town of Tecoluca.
Picture credit: mario pleitez (CC BY 2.0) · Ll1324 (Public domain) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Lempa River?
The river starts here: highlands of southern Guatemala.
It ends in the Pacific Ocean near Tecoluca.
Countries on the river: El Salvador.
The story behind it
The Lempa is the lifeline of El Salvador. It starts in Guatemala, dips into Honduras and then crosses the whole country from north to west and south, so its water belongs to three states at once. Several dams hold it back, and the wide Suchitlan reservoir behind the Cerron Grande dam makes much of the country's electricity while thousands of water birds rest on its surface. In the hurricane season, from summer to autumn, sudden storms can make the river rise dangerously, and villages near the banks have to be warned. Farmers grow maize, beans and sugar cane in the valley, and fishermen work from small boats. At the mouth the fresh water mixes with the sea among mangroves, where crabs, iguanas and young sea turtles find shelter.
Questions children ask
How long is the Lempa River?
The Lempa River is about 422 kilometres long altogether. Roughly 360 kilometres of that course run inside El Salvador.
Which countries does the Lempa River flow through?
Where does the Lempa River end?
It flows into the Pacific Ocean near Tecoluca. Its mouth is a wide area of mangroves, sandbanks and warm shallow water.
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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