The Merrimack River (or Merrimac River, an occasional earlier spelling) is a 117-mile-long (188 km) river in the northeastern United States. It rises at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, flows southward into Massachusetts, and then flows northeast until it empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Newburyport. From the point where the Merrimack turns northeast in Lowell, Massachusetts onward, the Massachusetts–New Hampshire border is roughly calculated as the line three miles north of the river.
The Merrimack is an important regional focus in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In New Hampshire, the central-southern part of the state is known as the Merrimack Valley Region, and in Massachusetts, the "Merrimack Valley" refers to a cluster of towns and small cities in the northeastern part of the state.
Several U.S. naval ships have been named the USS Merrimack and USS Merrimac in honor of this river.
Read more about Merrimack River: History and Details, Navigation, Etymology and Spelling, May 2006 Flooding, Other Flooding Events, In Media
Famous quotes related to merrimack river:
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)