River · Canada
South Saskatchewan River
The South Saskatchewan River is a prairie river in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. It forms where the Bow and Oldman rivers meet in southern Alberta and flows to the Saskatchewan River Forks, where it meets the North Saskatchewan.
Picture credit: https://www.flickr.com/people/shareski/ (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Jeffery J. Nichols (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Daryl Mitchell (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is South Saskatchewan River?
The river starts here: Confluence of the Bow and Oldman rivers, southern Alberta.
It ends in the Joins the North Saskatchewan at the Saskatchewan River Forks, east of Prince Albert.
Countries on the river: Canada.
The story behind it
The two rivers that form the South Saskatchewan both come from the Rocky Mountains. From their meeting point the river flows east to the city of Medicine Hat and then north-east into Saskatchewan. There the Gardiner Dam holds it back. Built between 1959 and 1967, the dam is almost 5 km long and 64 metres high, and it created Lake Diefenbaker, a lake 225 km long. Its water is used for farming, drinking and electricity. Further on lies Saskatoon, nicknamed the ‘City of Bridges’, because many bridges cross the river there. A riverboat called the Prairie Lily sails under several of them. Long ago, ice floating down the river even destroyed a bridge in Saskatoon. Northern pike, walleye and sturgeon live in the water, and moose and beavers along the banks. Henry Kelsey, around 1690, was the first European to reach the river.
Questions children ask
How long is the South Saskatchewan River?
Counted together with its source river, the Bow, the South Saskatchewan is about 1 392 km long. From the meeting of the Bow and Oldman rivers alone, it measures about 886 km.
Why is Saskatoon called the City of Bridges?
Many bridges cross the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, the oldest from 1907 and the newest from 2018. Newspapers were already using the nickname in the 1920s and 1930s.
What is Lake Diefenbaker?
Lake Diefenbaker is a reservoir about 225 km long, formed by the Gardiner Dam on the South Saskatchewan. It stores water for farm fields, drinking water and a hydroelectric power station.
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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