Which Is The Longest River Inside Wyoming?
When it comes to water, Wyoming comes up a little dry.
That's a far cry from when this area used to be under a shallow sea.
What about when Wyoming was a swamp? This area used to look like the Everglades in Florida or Louisiana bayou country.
But the Earth is ever-changing and evolving.
Now Wyoming sits high and mostly dry with a few rivers and lakes.
Can you guess which one might be the longest with our few rivers in the state?
If you guessed the Snake River then you are WRONG!
This section of Snake River in Wyoming is 30 miles long and is according to American Whitewater a class II-III section of whitewater.
The Snake River originates in Wyoming and, well, snakes, across southern Idaho before turning north along the Idaho-Oregon border. The river then enters Washington and from there, it's on to the Pacific Ocean.
Continuing outside Wyoming the Snake River is, however, one of the longest in North America. From end to end, the Snake is 1,078 miles long. It is the 13th longest river in the United States.
I wanted to say the Platte River was the longest in Wyoming.
However, the Wyomind section of the Patte River is not as long as you might think.
The Platte is 310-mile-long river, total, outside Wyoming. It flows through Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming and when combined with the length of the North Platte, the river stretches 990 miles.
The Sweetwater River is a 238-mile long tributary of the North Platte River, in the U.S. state of Wyoming. It is 185 miles long in Wyoming and is a part of the Mississippi River system, its waters eventually reach the Gulf of Mexico.
The Green River is mostly outside of Wyoming.
It begins in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming and flowing through Wyoming and Utah for most of its course, except for a short segment of 40 miles in western Colorado. Its area in Wyoming is shorter than the Platte and Snake.
So the winner for the longest river inside the Wyoming border is... DRUM ROLL!
The Wind River
Wind River is the name applied to the upper reaches of the Bighorn River in Wyoming in the United States. The Wyoming section of the Wind River is 185 miles long.
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