The South Saskatchewan River is a major river in Canada that flows through the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
For the first half of the 20th century, the South Saskatchewan would completely freeze over during winter, creating spectacular ice breaks and dangerous conditions in Saskatoon, Medicine Hat and elsewhere. At least one bridge in Saskatoon was destroyed by ice carried by the river. The construction of the Gardiner Dam in the 1960s, however, lessened the power of the river by diverting a substantial portion of the South Saskatchewan's natural flow into the Qu'Appelle River. By the 1980s many permanent sandbars had formed due to the lowering of the level of the river.
From the headwaters of the Bow River, the South Saskatchewan flows for 1,392 kilometres (865 mi). At its mouth at Saskatchewan River Forks, it has an average discharge of 280 m³/s, and has a watershed of 146,100 square kilometres (56,400 sq mi), 1,800 of which are in Montana in the USA, and 144,300 square kilometres (55,700 sq mi) in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Read more about South Saskatchewan River: Course, Tributaries, Islands, Fish Species
Famous quotes containing the words south and/or river:
“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)