Latitude: 42.3922
Longitude: -121.8802

Information: The Klamath River, called Ishkêesh by the Karuk and Koke by the Klamath tribe,[8] is a 263-mile (423 km) river in southeastern Oregon and northern California in the United States. Beginning at the outlet of Upper Klamath Lake east of the Cascade Range, the river drains 15,751 square miles (40,790 km2) in parts of three Oregon counties and five in California. It is one of only a few rivers that cut through the Cascade Range - the Fraser and Columbia being the others. The Trinity River is its largest tributary, the Scott River, Shasta River, and Salmon River being some of the others. Because of its watershed's peculiar geography - the most agriculture in the upper reaches, and most of the wilderness and mountains downstream of there - it has been called "a river upside down"[9] by National Geographic. Before the area became part of the United States, the Yurok, Hupa, Klamath, Yahooskin, and Karuk tribes lived along its length for up to 7,000 years. Upper Klamath Lake was smaller and Lower Klamath Lake, a now-drained basin used primarily for agriculture, was a vast freshwater marsh. Now, although dammed for several times along its course by the Bureau of Reclamation, California-Oregon Power (Copco), PacifiCorp, and other hydroelectric projects, the Klamath is one of the most important anadromous fish rivers of the United States' west coast - much of the runs being via the Trinity River and its South Fork. In the 1960s a massive water diversion project - the Ah Pah Dam - was proposed by the Bureau of Reclamation, but was never built due to social, political and enviromental issues. The Klamath Basin includes parts of the Klamath National Forest, Lava Beds National Monument, Six Rivers National Forest, and other recreational areas. Whitewater rafting and fishing are popular along some reaches of the Klamath and some of its tributaries. The Klamath is one of the largest rivers in California whose flow still mostly reaches the sea - some 12,000,000 acre feet (1.5×1010 m3) annually. For comparison, the Colorado River is dry before it reaches the ocean and the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers are also diverted before their mouth.