Platte River

The Platte River [plæt] is a 499 km long right tributary of the Missouri River in the U.S. state of Nebraska.

Its river system is one of the most significant components of the Missouri River drainage basin, draining much of the Great Plains in Nebraska and the eastern Rocky Mountains in Colorado and Wyoming. The river was significant in the westward expansion of the United States, as major travel routes ran along its course, including the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail. In the 18th century, the river was also known as the Nebraska River by French fur traders.

Run

The river is formed in western Nebraska at North Platte by the confluence of its headwaters, the North Platte River and the South Platte River, which rise in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado not far from the Continental Divide. In a wide arc it flows first southeast and then northeast, passing the towns of Gothenburg, Cozad, Kearney, and Grand Island on its way. Five miles southeast of Columbus the Loup River enters. The Platte River then flows east past Northbend to Fremont and turns south. After flowing south past Omaha, it joins the Missouri River a few miles north of Plattsmouth.

The Platte River drainage basin is approximately 233,100 square kilometers. Together with the North Platte River, it is 1593 km long. The Platte River drains one of the driest areas of the Great Plains, and therefore its flow is significantly less than other rivers of comparable length in North America. For most of its course, it is a wide but shallow river.

In pioneer days, the Platteriver was humorously described as "a mile wide at his mouth, but only six inches deep" and this was applied to Nebraska-born politician William Jennings Bryan.

In western Nebraska, the banks and riverbed are an oasis in an otherwise semi-arid region. The middle section of the Platte River is an important resting place for migrating waterfowl on the middle bird migration path of North America, for example whooping cranes and sandhill cranes.

The river has shrunk considerably in the last seven decades, which is partly due to irrigation measures, but is largely due to the construction of dams. These serve the drinking water extraction of the growing population of Colorado, for which the use of groundwater is no longer sufficient.

History

The first European to explore the Platte River was the French explorer Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who named the river "Nebraskan" in 1714. The word is from the Oto language and means "shallow water." Later, the river got its name from the French word for flat, "platte." To the French, the river was a valuable transportation route in the fur trade with the Indians from the Pawnee and Oto tribes.

The river lay in a gray area between Spanish and French claims to the Great Plains. Joseph Naranjo, an explorer of African Indian descent, had also come as far as the Platte and later led the Villasur Expedition here to stop French expansion. This expedition was the furthest penetration of the Spanish into the great plains.

After the area was ceded to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase, Major Stephen Harriman Long explored and mapped the river in 1820. He played an important role in the westward migration of the 19th century. Both the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail followed the course of the Platte and North Platte Rivers. During the 1860s, the two rivers formed the route of the Pony Express and later the alignment for the Union Pacific Railroad's section in the construction of the first railroad across North America. In the 20th century, the valley was used for the alignment of the Lincoln Highway and later Interstate 80, which runs parallel to the Platte and North Platte Rivers through most of Nebraska.