23 June: American Rivers

June is American rivers month. 10 facts about rivers in the USA:

1. There are more than 250,000 rivers in the USA, equating to about 3,500,000 miles of rivers.
2. The longest of them is the Missouri at 2,540 miles long and the deepest is the Mississippi.
3. The oldest river in the US and the second oldest in the world after the Nile, is in West Virginia. Ironically, it's known as The New River.
4. 65% of America's drinking Water comes from its rivers.
5. So does a lot of its hydroelectric power. There are approximately 8,100 dams in the country and the rivers provide enough power for about 96 million households.
6. Pollution is a problem. There's a river in Cleveland, Ohio which was at one time so polluted that it caught Fire 13 times in the 1960s. Fires on the Cuyahoga river helped start the American environmental movement. Fish in the Hudson River in New York have actually evolved so that they are better able to cope with pollution.
7. Rivers are often natural borders between states and counties. At one point, the Mississippi formed the Western border of the US, but as people began to move further west, it became the symbolic start of the frontier instead. The Rio Grande forms part of the border between the US and Mexico.
8. In 1812 there were earthquakes in America that were so powerful that they made the Mississippi River flow backwards. The Chicago River flows backwards because early 20th century engineers wanted it to, and deliberately changed its course.
9. Rivers in the US are in the public domain, which means if you can navigate it in a canoe or a raft, you are free to do so, although the land around the river may be privately owned so it may not be legal to access the rivers from just anywhere.
10. There is a project underway to map America's waterways so they can be seen online, rather like Google Streetview on water. The Riverview Project have been paddling canoes equipped with multi-lens cameras to capture 360 degrees of imagery as they go.

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