The Arkansas River, 1470 miles long, rises along the Continental Divide in Central Colorado. After flowing southward through one of the most spectacular mountain valleys in North America, flanked by the Sawatch and Mosquito Ranges, the river angles to the east to slice a rugged canyon through the foothills. There it enters Pueblo Reservoir and then begins its long journey across the Southern Plains.
While the Arkansas is the southern counterpart of the Missouri River, it flows through drier terrain and remains rather small for much of its course. However, once in eastern Kansas, eastern Oklahoma and Arkansas, the river enters the moisture plume from the Gulf of Mexico and picks up flow from large tributaries such as the Cimarron, Verdigris, Neosha and Canadian Rivers. Flowing across Arkansas from northwest to southeast, the full-fledged river finally enters the Mississippi a short distance north of the Louisiana border.
Connecting Colorado, where I have spent much of my life, and Arkansas, where I experienced some of my early development as a naturalist, I have long felt a special attachment to this River. In the early 1980s, while working at the University of Arkansas Medical Center, in Little Rock, I spent many days along the Arkansas' scenic valley, exploring wetlands, sandbars, mudflats and riverside forest. It was there that I saw many birds for the first time (including bald eagles, yellow-crowned night herons, black and least terns and painted buntings), stoking my enthusiasm for the great outdoors.
