Nicknamed the “Big Muddy”, the Missouri certainly to use this name.
The Missouri River is a major river of central North America, and is a tributary of the Mississippi River. It is the longest river on the continent at over 3,770 km and the second largest tributary of the Mississippi by discharge, after the Ohio River. The watershed of the Missouri River drains nearly square 1,400,000 km2 of the eastern Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, spanning parts of ten USA States and two Canadian provinces. About 10 million people live in the drainage area, many concentrated in urban centers along the main stem such as St. Louis, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, Omaha, Nebraska, and Great Falls, Montana.
Close on the river
With a drainage basin spanning 1,371,000 km2 square, the Missouri's catchment encompasses nearly 1/6 of the area of the United States or just over 5% of the continent of North America. The mostly flat, arid basin, comparable to the size of the Canadian province of Quebec, encompasses most of the northern Great Plains, stretching over 2,400 km from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River valley in the east. From north to south it reaches well over 2,600 km, from the U.S.-Canada border in the north to the Arkansas River valley of the south. Compared with the Mississippi River above their confluence, the Missouri is actually much longer and drains a greater area. However, the flow of the Mississippi at the confluence accounts for 56% of the total amount of water below the meeting of the rivers. Although the plains of the watershed appear flat to the eye, there is a definite slope from west to east the land is roughly 910 m above sea level at the base of the Rockies, but less than 150 m at the border of the Mississippi valley. As one of the continent's most important rivers, the Missouri's drainage basin borders on many other major watersheds of the United States and Canada.
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