The Yukon River is the longest river in Yukon & Alaska. Third longest river in North America, flowing northwest from the Coastal Range mountains of northern British Columbia, through the Yukon Territory and Alaska to the Bering Sea. Its overall length is 3185 kilometers (km), with 1149 km within Canadian borders. The watershed’s total drainage area is 840 000 sq. km (323 800 sq. km in Canada) and it discharges 195 cubic kilometers of water per year.
During the Klondike Gold Rush the Yukon River was one of the principal means of transportation. Paddle-wheel riverboats continued to ply the river until the 1950s, when the Klondike Highway was completed.
Earn 10 points!
Photo: Photography copyright (c) 2006 Derek Ramsey. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License