Another canal that breached the Great Lakes / Mississippi was the one in the aptly named Portage, Wisconsin – where the Fox (going into Lake Winnebago and then to Lake Michigan) and the Wisconsin (which drains into the Mississippi) come close. Some of Wisconsin’s earlies cities are along this route: Green Bay (where the Fox hits Lake Michigan), Prarie du Chien (where the Wisconsin meets the Mississippi), and Portage.
Brian
How is it that Lake Okeechobee manages to straddle the divide between the Gulf of Mexico Basin and the Atlantic Basin? Or is Floridan hydrology just that weird?
Okeechobee drains southwards, mainly through the Everglades. The lake’s watershed north of the lake itself is evidently too narrow to show on a map at that scale.
This is from American Heritage Dictionary:
Con·ti·nen·tal Di·vide A series of mountain ridges extending from Alaska to Mexico that forms the watershed of North America. Most of it runs along peaks of the Rocky Mountains and is often called the Great Divide in the United States.
Yeah, but the Norway/Scotland-to-Iceland gap is huge by comparison to most other between-oceans breaks, and it’s debatable where the Atlantic leaves off and the Arctic begins. For example, the last attenuated dregs of the Gulf Stream keep the coast of Norway all the way up to Murmansk on the northwesternmost tip of Russia (barely) navigable year-round. (It’s one of the fun bits of trivia that Russia has ports on (seas of) the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans, but of the lot, the only port that’s accessible for the full year is on the Arctic.)
For what it’s worth, in figuring “the Continental Divide” in North America, i.e., the one between Atlantic and Pacific drainage, the Arctic is counted along with the Atlantic, since what you class Hudson’s Bay, Baffin Bay, the Gulf of Boothia, etc., is arguable, but the break between Pacific and Arctic is clear and very narrow – from Cape Wales, Alaska to Poluostrov Uelen, Siberia (same name for facing peninsulas in two different languages) is only 50 miles. So the Continental Divide runs north through B.C., the Yukon, and Alaska. Granted that nobody really thinks the Mackenzie flows into the Atlantic, the demarcation between Arctic and Pacific drainage basins is clearcut along the mountains; defining the Atlantic/Arctic break in groups of watersheds is substantially less obvious.
You’re right. The US has a nice, simple scheme with everything flowing into one of two unconnected (for our purposes) oceans. Being an Island, Australia doesn’t do this quite as simply.
Firstly, the term “continental divide” is something I’d never heard of before about five minutes ago (I clicked on the thread to find out). We have a “great divide” in Australia, more properly known as the “Great Dividing Range”, which is a huge north-south spine of mountains running up the entire eastern side of the country from Victoria, past Sydney, to the top of Far North Queensland in the tropics. This is a somewhat lopsided situation in terms of the word ‘divide’, as there is about 3000 miles of the country on one side of the mountains, and only about fifty on the other (the latter being known as the “Coastal Strip”, and holding the cities of Sydney and Brisbane).
All up the eastern coast of the country, small and usually unconnected river systems drain water from the top of the mountains to the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea. Western water from a point on top of the mountains to a point a few hundred miles west (most of New South Wales and Queensland) flows into the Murray-Darling river system, which is the country’s main one. These rivers catch the water and divert it towards the south/south-west, and after travelling through four states, it is released into the Southern Ocean. The exception to this is the western-flowing water from the far northern part of Queensland, which empties into the Gulf of Carpentaria (the chunk missing in the north of the country).
That’s the eastern half of the country more or less explained. The western half is not connected to anything to do with the Great Dividing Range, and instead has a series of smaller rivers with smaller catchment areas flowing into the Indian Ocean and Timor Sea. Bear in mind that this is the arid part of the country, and what rain does fall in the interior usually doesn’t make it to the sea anyway.
In Yellowstone there is a small lake that sits astride the (western) Continential Divide. The lake has two outlets (when the lake has a high water level), and the outlets drain onto opposite sides of the Divide.
The curious fact is, the lake sits on a switchback in the Divide – so the eastern outlet drains to the Pacific, and the western outlet drains to the Atlantic.
All around the DC/Baltimore area, drainage sewers have signs with the warning: “Chesapeake Bay Drainage: Do Not Pollute”.
As you drive north on I-95 leaving Maryland, there’s a sign stating: “Now leaving Chesapeake Bay watershed”. I always think to myself, “Oh, so now it’s OK to pollute.”
Although it’s not a ‘hole’ in the divide like your Wyoming basin is, the Great Basin is much bigger, taking most of Nevada, the western half of Utah, and bits of the adjoining states. Rain that falls within its boundaries doesn’t go into any ocean or sea, but simply disappears into a sink.
Pretty cool information about Two Ocean Creek, though.
From a science show on TV I heard that before the Andes much of the current Amazon basin emptied into the Pacific Ocean when the highlands along the eastern shore were higher. Then the Andes rose and the rivers could no longer drain west and were forced east.
I suppose if the land had a small enough rise which caused rivers to empty into one side of a peninsula a large earthquake could cause the land to tilt just enough for it to empty the other way.
Alberta is unique as it has watersheds that drain to Hudsons Bay, the Arctic Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico.
And… I believe that although it’s western border is supposed to be the Continental Divide, there’s got to be a few drops of Alberta water that end up in the Pacific.
Isn’t Kaliningrad ice-free throughout the year? I realize that the Kaliningrad Oblast is an exclave of Russia, so perhaps you’re discounting it because of that, but I think K-grad is generally ice-free year-round.
Israel is also pretty unique when it comes to watersheds - water drains either to the Mediterranian (and thus the Atlantic), the Red Sea (and thus to the Indian Ocean) or the Dead Sea, which connects to neither.
Alberta was one other area I was going to mention. You can see Snow Dome while standing on the Athabasca Glacier at the Columbia Snowfields glacier excursion. It was pointed out to us that Snow Dome drained towards the Pacific Ocean, Arctic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. In pulling out the map I do see that you are right, the Alberta/British Columbia boundary seems to follow the Continental Divide so I guess technically Alberta does not drain to the Pacific, except perhaps for a few rambunctious stray rain drops. 
Wonderful memories of a wonderful trip.
This has been a great thread. Thank you to waterj2, Colophon and Scuba_Ben for a bunch of interesting and entertaining links or information.
Aside from the Pacific drainage, Saskatchewan seems to have pieces of all those drainage basins as well.