Which is longer? When I was in school we were taugh the mighty Mississip but now my almanac and encyclopedia are saying Missouri.
Also how come it seems everything I learned in school now is wrong?
New math.
I seem to recall that the Mississippi has lots of bends and loops, and that occasionally a flood will cut through the neck of a bend. This leaves the former loop of river as an “oxbow” lake, and shortens the overall length of the river. So it could be the Mississippi is shorter than it used to be.
If guns are outlawed, then gun owners will be outlaws.
So when (and where) did you go to school? I went to public school in the '30s and '40s in CA, US. I seem to recall they told me then the Missouri was longer than the Mississip. My 1951 atlas is a big help: It says the Mississippi-Missouri River is 4240 mi long, apparently so that the USA wins the prize for having the longest river in the world. My 1982 dictionary says the Mississippi is 2350 mi long, while the Missouri is 2565 mi. I don’t know exactly how one plays these games – probably by measuring at low tide at one end and a heavy run-off in a rivulet feeding the longest creek at the other end. (In my atlas, the Nile comes in second, the Amazon third.)
Ray (adrift on the river of no return w/o a paddle)
I can sympathize with the complaint that “everything they taught me in school turned out to be wrong.” I used to “know” that dinosaurs were cold blooded, that Robert Peary was the first man to reach the North Pole, and that the Mississippi was the longest river in the USA.
Well, the first two “facts” have been either disproven or cast into doubt by new discoveries. But the last “fact” has changed mainly because of interpretation. That is, the WATER hasn’t changed, but geographers have changed their opinions as to where rivers begin or end.
SOMETIMES, geographical definitions are clear and obvious. Sometimes, they’re man-made, and thus rather arbitrary and subjective. The Mississippi RIver begins in Minnesota and ends at the Gulf of Mexico- THAT definition hasn’t changed in centuries. THAT river is still 2348 miles long, at least acoording to the NY TImes Almanac. But today’s definition of the Missouri River isn’t necessarily trhe definition that all (or even most) geographers were using a generation or more ago. If you NOW believe that the Missouri river begins in Montana and “ends” in Missouri (where it intersects with the Mississippi River), then it’s “only” 2315 miles, a bit shorter than the Mississippi. But… who says the Missouri “ends” when it reaches the Mississipi??? Isn’t it just as plausible to say that the Mississippi River ends in Missouri where it connects with the Missouri?
In other words, you COULD plausibly argue that the Missouri River begins in Montana and flows 4000+ miles to the Gulf of Mexico. If you’ve grown up thinking of rivers as independent, free standing units, get over that! Rivers are often a network, and separating one from the other is, as I said, an utterly artificial, arbitrary process.
I dunno about that longest river in the world stuff. My Nat’l Geographic Atlas of the world (1973) lists the Missouri-Mississippi river as 5,791 km, #4 behind the Nile, Amazon and Chang Jiang (Yangtze). Denial comes in at 6,671 km.
This book was published during the great “metric conversion” (yehright!) and does not show miles. You do the math.
Astorian pretty well answered this, but since I saved my answer as ASCII last night when the board broke, I am going to post it now, anyway:
Ever since Schoolcraft or Woodward or whoever decided that Lake Itasca was the Mississippi headwaters, we have known that the Missouri (starting in Montana) is shorter.
(Debated below.)
The Mississippi is larger because it carries more water (all of it’s own plus all of the Missouri’s plus all of the Ohio’s (including a last minute addition of the Tennessee’s) plus several others’).
The main problem is that the length of a river is determined by the arbitrary decision of where a river begins or ends.
From Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi is 2,340.
The Missouri, ending at the Mississippi, is 2,315.
But wait! This measures the Missouri from the junction of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers. What would happen if we decided that there was no such river as the Jefferson or the Madison or the Gallatin? Then the Missouri would be that much longer by the length of whichever river we unnamed.
We actually do that with a different tributary: The Missouri-Red Rock system is 2,540 miles long.
Who is to say which of these flowing streams of water are “actually” one river or another?
(Of course, if we do that with the Missouri, then we have to go back to Minnesota and see whether we can find a longer tributary to make the Mississippi longer.)
All distances based on the World Almanac and Book of Facts©.
I would not worry about it too much.
Tom~
“Also how come it seems everything I learned in school now is wrong?”
I wanna know when Hally’s Comet, pronounced with a long A became Hally’s Comet, pronounced with a short A.
When it was named for Edmond Halley (with a short A, note double L) after he associated it with other comets sightings that had been described and correctly predicted its return.
The question is: when was Halley’s name corrupted to be pronounced with a long A by hoi polloi? Before or after Bill Haley (note single L, giving a long A sound) became popular for his music?
Tom~
Hmmm … I’m going down to the central part of town to ruminate on this one.
Wasn’t Halley British? Shouldn’t we then follow the British example? All the Britons that I’ve heard say his name, have pronounced it closer to “holly” or “hahlee” than “haley” or “hal lee”.
I thought the way to determine the length of a river was just to start at the coast and work your way up all the various tributaries until you found the headwaters that was furthest from the mouth. This is why I thought the Mississippi-Missouri could be treated as a single river. How is the length of the Nile calculated? Does it include the Blue Nile or the White Nile or neither?
Boris B, you are basically right. You would be completely right if people were logical. Of course, you would still have to deal with the rather arbitrary nature of the thing you are trying to describe. Putting two rivers together gives you greater length, but you wind up calling it a river system. (The Mississippi-Missouri-red Rock at 3,710 miles, still loses to the Amazon (4,000) and the Nile (4,160).)
For example, you are working your way up a river and you come to a point where two streams merge. The stream on your left is flowing at 1,000 gallons per minute while the stream on your right is flowing at 800 gpm. You want the “real” river, so you pick the left branch (more water=bigger, therefore, “real,” river). Fifty miles upstream, you discover that the branch you picked is the result of merging two other streams that are flowing at 600 gpm and 400 gpm, so you pick one of them to be “the” river. Later, exploring the 800 gpm river that you initially disregarded, you discover that it is actually 100 miles longer than the 1,000 gpm stream plus either its 600 gpm or its 400 gpm tributary. Now which stream is the “right” one for your river? (This is actually the case for the Missouri/Red Rock system vs the “true” Missouri that “begins” at the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers.)
Another problem is the way in which white folks have “discovered” rivers. Moving westward across New York and Pennsylvania, whites encountered two rivers called (locally) the Allegheny and the Monongahela. Later, farther west, they discovered a river called (locally) Ohio. Had they begun at the juncture of the Ohio and the Mississippi and worked their way up, they may have never accepted the names Allegheny or Monongahela, continuing to call at least one of then Ohio. As it is, we arbitrarily have decided that the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers “end” at the beginning of the Ohio. :::shrug:::
When determining the length of the Nile, the White Nile is used to figure the longest flow.
Rivers are simply water flowing in channels. It is human nature to put names on things (and that certainly aids in map-making), but the assignment of names to water flowing in channels is a human caprice that has only a marginally objective reality.
Tom~
The tri-river problem arose in my hometown, Grand Jct., CO. The Grand River and Gunnison River joined to form the Colorado River. Later, the Grand was redesignated as the first part of the Colorado.
I’ve read that the Ohio actually has greater volume at the Mississippi-Ohio junction. Would the Missouri-Mississippi system therefore not be a tributary of the Ohio, which flows to New Orleans?
Just wondering.
“Owls will deafen us with their incessant hooting!” W. Smithers
Actually, the states of Missouri and Mississippi have been holding a “longest river” competition for many years. Each state hires cheap immigrant labor to try to lengthen their respective river, so as to beat out the other state’s river. These laborers dig at night, in the dark, so that no geographers catch them (since that would be cheating.)
The Mississippi always had a slight edge, up till a few years ago, when the cheap labor (“you get what you pay for”) dug the Mississippi WIDER rather than LONGER, enabling the diggers at the Missouri to get a slight lead on length.
The state of Missouri is now selling bumper stickers and buttons and mugs and t-shirts that have slogans about the longest river. This irks the Mississippi souvenier producers, who are lying in wait for the chance to…
Huh? Well, if you’re going to be rude about it…
Tomndebb had the answer I was looking for. I found an old encylopedia and that one does measure the Missouri from the junction of the three rivers. My new encylopedia measures it from the beginning of the Jefferson. Thus making it longer.
Well, now, wait, in California we measure rivers differently. When I was growing up, what they now usually call the ‘Central Valley’ was called the ‘Sacramento - San Joaquin Valley’, because it is continuous and straight and includes both the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, which flow together into a delta, which then feeds the Carquinez Strait, which leads to San Pablo Bay and then San Francisco Bay and then the Pacific Ocean. (If this story isn’t long enough, you can put a Suisun Bay in there with the Carquinez Strait.) But what I was getting away from is: If one now calls the common valley the ‘Central Valley’, one should be able to say that in that valley is the Central River, which runs from one end of it to the other – so what if it runs half of the way downhill and the other up-? In order to compete in river length, California is willing to forego the distance from the delta to the ocean and just add up the lengths of the two rivers from where they start down to the delta. Of course, to help out the Sacramento, we’ll stick in the Pitt, which runs longer, I believe, than does the Sacto above their confluence.
Well, actually I was hoping here to sport the longest post here on measuring rivers. If I haven’t, I’ll be up the creek tomorrow.
Ray (run-off at Sutter’s Mill)
I don’t want to lose this one.