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129-510: People have lived along the Rogue River and its tributaries for at least 8,500 years. European explorers made first contact with Native Americans (Indians) toward the end of the 18th century and began beaver trapping and other activities in the region. Clashes, sometimes deadly, occurred between the natives and the trappers and later between the natives and European-American miners and settlers. These struggles culminated with

258-508: A Hall of Fame baseball player, married a teacher from Illahe, and made his home along the Rogue. From 1940 to 1990, actress and dancer Ginger Rogers owned the 1,000-acre (400 ha) Rogue River Ranch, operated for many years as a dairy farm, near Eagle Point. The historic Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford was named after her. Actress Kim Novak and her veterinarian husband bought

387-432: A density current that deposits its sediments as turbidites . When the river water is less dense than the basin water, as is typical of river deltas on an ocean coastline, the delta is characterized by hypopycnal flow in which the river water is slow to mix with the denser basin water and spreads out as a surface fan. This allows fine sediments to be carried a considerable distance before settling out of suspension. Beds in

516-505: A hatchery at Ellensburg (Gold Beach), which released fish into the river. In its first year of operation, Hume collected 215,000 salmon eggs and released about 100,000  fry . After the first hatchery was destroyed by fire in 1893, Hume built a new hatchery in 1895, and in 1897 he co-operated with the United States Fish Commission in building and operating an egg-collecting station at the mouth of Elk Creek on

645-701: A chapter based on a drift-boat trip he took down the lower Rogue in 1925. The Trust for Public Land bought the property at Winkle Bar and transferred it in 2008 to the BLM, which made it accessible to the public. In the 1930s and 1940s, many other celebrities, attracted by the scenery, fishing, rustic lodges, and boat trips, visited the lower Rogue. Famous visitors included actors Clark Gable , Tyrone Power and Myrna Loy , singer Bing Crosby , author William Faulkner , journalist Ernie Pyle , radio comedians Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll , circus performer Emmett Kelly , and football star Norm van Brocklin . Bobby Doerr ,

774-493: A common location for civilizations to flourish due to access to flat land for farming, freshwater for sanitation and irrigation , and sea access for trade. Deltas often host extensive industrial and commercial activities, and agricultural land is frequently in conflict. Some of the world's largest regional economies are located on deltas such as the Pearl River Delta , Yangtze River Delta , European Low Countries and

903-545: A delta but enter into the sea in the form of an estuary . Notable examples include the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Tagus estuary. In rare cases, the river delta is located inside a large valley and is called an inverted river delta . Sometimes a river divides into multiple branches in an inland area, only to rejoin and continue to the sea. Such an area is called an inland delta , and often occurs on former lake beds. The term

1032-533: A fan. The more often the flow changes course, the shape develops closer to an ideal fan because more rapid changes in channel position result in a more uniform deposition of sediment on the delta front. The Mississippi and Ural River deltas, with their bird's feet, are examples of rivers that do not avulse often enough to form a symmetrical fan shape. Alluvial fan deltas, as seen by their name, avulse frequently and more closely approximate an ideal fan shape. Most large river deltas discharge to intra-cratonic basins on

1161-399: A few main distributaries. Once a wave-dominated or river-dominated distributary silts up, it is abandoned, and a new channel forms elsewhere. In a tidal delta, new distributaries are formed during times when there is a lot of water around – such as floods or storm surges . These distributaries slowly silt up at a more or less constant rate until they fizzle out. A tidal freshwater delta is

1290-545: A flat arid area splits into channels that evaporate as it progresses into the desert. The Okavango Delta in Botswana is one example. See endorheic basin . The generic term mega delta can be used to describe very large Asian river deltas, such as the Yangtze , Pearl , Red , Mekong , Irrawaddy , Ganges-Brahmaputra , and Indus . The formation of a delta is complicated, multiple, and cross-cutting over time, but in

1419-635: A home and 43 acres (17 ha) of land in 1997 near the Rogue River in Sams Valley , where they raise horses and llamas . Since the removal of the Gold Ray Dam in 2010, there remain two dams on the main stem of the Rogue River. The William L. Jess Dam , a huge flood-control and hydroelectric structure, blocks the Rogue River 157 miles (253 km) from its mouth. Built by the USACE between 1972 and 1976, it impounds Lost Creek Lake . The dam, which

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1548-573: A hypocynal delta dip at a very shallow angle, around 1 degree. Fluvial-dominated deltas are further distinguished by the relative importance of the inertia of rapidly flowing water, the importance of turbulent bed friction beyond the river mouth, and buoyancy . Outflow dominated by inertia tends to form Gilbert-type deltas. Outflow dominated by turbulent friction is prone to channel bifurcation, while buoyancy-dominated outflow produces long distributaries with narrow subaqueous natural levees and few channel bifurcations. The modern Mississippi River delta

1677-439: A mature delta with a distributary network. Another way these distributary networks form is from the deposition of mouth bars (mid-channel sand and/or gravel bars at the mouth of a river). When this mid-channel bar is deposited at the mouth of a river, the flow is routed around it. This results in additional deposition on the upstream end of the mouth bar, which splits the river into two distributary channels. A good example of

1806-400: A new river, to be given its own name, perhaps one already known to the people who live upon its banks. Conversely, explorers approaching a new land from the sea encounter its rivers at their mouths, where they name them on their charts, then, following a river upstream, encounter each tributary as a forking of the stream to the right and to the left, which then appear on their charts as such; or

1935-585: A new treaty with some but not all of the Indian bands, removing them from Bear Creek and other tributaries on the south side of the main stem. At about the same time, more white emigrants, including women and children, were settling in the region. By 1852, about 28  donation land claims had been filed in the Rogue Valley. Further clashes in 1853 led to the Treaty with the Rogue River (1853) that established

2064-656: A party of 15 men led by Jesse Applegate developed a southern alternative to the Oregon Trail ; the new trail was used by emigrants headed for the Willamette Valley. Later called the Applegate Trail , it passed through the Rogue and Bear Creek valleys and crossed the Cascade Range between Ashland and south of Upper Klamath Lake. From 90 to 100 wagons and 450 to 500 emigrants used

2193-535: A population of about 181,300, most of them living in the Rogue River Valley cities of Ashland (19,500), Talent (5,600), Phoenix (4,100), Medford (63,200), Central Point (12,500), and Jacksonville (2,200). Others in Jackson County lived in the cities of Shady Cove (2,300), Eagle Point (4,800), Butte Falls (400) and Rogue River (1,800). Josephine County had a population of 75,700, including

2322-423: A sedimentary deposit formed at the boundary between an upland stream and an estuary, in the region known as the "subestuary". Drowned coastal river valleys that were inundated by rising sea levels during the late Pleistocene and subsequent Holocene tend to have dendritic estuaries with many feeder tributaries. Each tributary mimics this salinity gradient from its brackish junction with the mainstem estuary up to

2451-447: A simple delta three main types of bedding may be distinguished: the bottomset beds, foreset/frontset beds, and topset beds. This three-part structure may be seen on small scale by crossbedding . Human activities in both deltas and the river basins upstream of deltas can radically alter delta environments. Upstream land use change such as anti-erosion agricultural practices and hydrological engineering such as dam construction in

2580-586: A single arch. Built in 1920 for $ 48,400, it replaced a wooden bridge at the same site. The bridge was closed in September 2009 for repairs to its deck and railings . The project is expected to cost $ 3.9 million. Caveman Bridge in Grants Pass is a 550-foot (170 m), three-arch concrete structure. Designed by McCullough and built in 1931, it replaced the Robertson Bridge. The city calls

2709-724: A state referendum banned commercial fishing on the Rogue, but this decision was reversed in 1913. As fish runs continued to dwindle, the state legislature finally closed the river to commercial fishing in 1935. As of 2010, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) operates the Cole M. Rivers Hatchery near the base of the dam at Lost Creek Lake, slightly upstream of the former Rogue–Elk Hatchery built by Hume. It raises rainbow trout (steelhead), Coho salmon , spring and fall Chinook salmon , and summer and winter steelhead. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) built

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2838-593: Is 345 feet (105 m) high and 3,600 feet (1,100 m) long, prevents salmon migration above this point. When the lake is full, it covers 3,428 acres (1,387 ha) and has an average depth of 136 feet (41 m). Ranked by storage capacity, its reservoir is the seventh-largest in Oregon. The only artificial barrier on the main stem of the Rogue upstream of Lost Creek Lake is a diversion dam at Prospect at RM 172 (RK 277). The concrete dam, 50 feet (15 m) high and 384 feet (117 m) wide, impounds water from

2967-551: Is a good example of a fluvial-dominated delta whose outflow is buoyancy-dominated. Channel abandonment has been frequent, with seven distinct channels active over the last 5000 years. Other fluvial-dominated deltas include the Mackenzie delta and the Alta delta. A Gilbert delta (named after Grove Karl Gilbert ) is a type of fluvial-dominated delta formed from coarse sediments, as opposed to gently sloping muddy deltas such as that of

3096-591: Is called by the Ionians ", including describing the outflow of silt into the sea and the convexly curved seaward side of the triangle. Despite making comparisons to other river systems deltas, Herodotus did not describe them as "deltas". The Greek historian Polybius likened the land between the Rhône and Isère rivers to the Nile Delta, referring to both as islands, but did not apply the word delta. According to

3225-449: Is charged with controlling water pollution in the basin. United States National Forests and other forests cover about 83 percent of the basin; another 6 percent is grassland, 3 percent shrub, and only 0.2 percent wetland . Urban areas account for slightly less than 1 percent and farms for about 6 percent. Precipitation in the Rogue basin varies greatly from place to place and season to season. At Gold Beach on

3354-485: Is estimated to have been about 3,800. The population before the arrival of explorers and European diseases is thought to have been at least one-third larger, but "there is insufficient evidence to estimate aboriginal populations prior to the time of first white contact... ". The first recorded encounter between whites and coastal southwestern Oregon Indians occurred in 1792 when British explorer George Vancouver anchored off Cape Blanco , about 30 miles (48 km) north of

3483-548: Is so named because the shape of the Nile Delta approximates the triangular uppercase Greek letter delta . The triangular shape of the Nile Delta was known to audiences of classical Athenian drama ; the tragedy Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus refers to it as the "triangular Nilotic land", though not as a "delta". Herodotus 's description of Egypt in his Histories mentions the Delta fourteen times, as "the Delta, as it

3612-567: The Chinook Jargon word ilahekh , meaning "land" or "earth". Propelled by rowing, poling, pushing, pulling, and sometimes by sail, the mail boat delivered letters and small packages, including groceries from Wedderburn, where a post office was established later in 1895. In 1897, the department established a post office near the confluence of the Rogue and the Illinois rivers, 8 miles (13 km) downriver from Illahe. The postmaster named

3741-662: The Greater Tokyo Area . The Ganges–Brahmaputra Delta , which spans most of Bangladesh and West Bengal and empties into the Bay of Bengal , is the world's largest delta. The Selenga River delta in the Russian republic of Buryatia is the largest delta emptying into a body of fresh water, in its case Lake Baikal . Researchers have found a number of examples of deltas that formed in Martian lakes . Finding deltas

3870-532: The Nile Delta and Colorado River Delta are some of the most extreme examples of the devastation caused to deltas by damming and diversion of water. Historical data documents show that during the Roman Empire and Little Ice Age (times when there was considerable anthropogenic pressure), there was significant sediment accumulation in deltas. The industrial revolution has only amplified the impact of humans on delta growth and retreat. Ancient deltas benefit

3999-894: The Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs , ordered their removal, involving a forced march of 33 days, to the newly established Grande Ronde Reservation in Yamhill County, Oregon . After the Rogue River War, a small number of newcomers began to settle along or near the Rogue River Canyon. These pioneers , some of whom were white gold miners married to native Karok women from the Klamath River basin, established gardens and orchards, kept horses, cows, and other livestock, and received occasional shipments of goods sent by pack mule over

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4128-671: The Oregon Territory passed through the Rogue Valley on their way to the Sacramento River basin. After Indians attacked a group of returning miners along the Rogue in 1850, former territorial governor Joseph Lane negotiated a peace treaty with Apserkahar , a leader of the Takelma Indians. It promised protection of Indian rights and safe passage through the Rogue Valley for white miners and settlers. The peace did not last. Miners began prospecting for gold in

4257-614: The Rogue River Wars of 1855–56 and removal of most of the natives to reservations outside the basin. After the war, settlers expanded into remote areas of the watershed and established small farms along the river between Grave Creek and the mouth of the Illinois River . They were relatively isolated from the outside world until 1895, when the Post Office Department added mail boat service along

4386-669: The South Fork Rogue River , Elk Creek , Larson Creek , Bear Creek , the Applegate River , and the Illinois River . Arising at 5,320 feet (1,622 m) above sea level , the river loses more than 1 mile (1.6 km) in elevation by the time it reaches the Pacific. It was one of the original eight rivers named in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, which included 84 miles (135 km) of

4515-644: The Table Rock Indian Reservation across the river from the federal Fort Lane. As the white population increased and Indian losses of land, food sources, and personal safety mounted, bouts of violence upstream and down continued through 1854–55, culminating in the Rogue River War of 1855–56. Suffering from cold, hunger, and disease on the Table Rock Reservation, a group of Takelma returned to their old village at

4644-584: The Whitman massacre and the Cayuse War in what became southeastern Washington raised fears among white settlers throughout the region and led to the formation of large volunteer militias organized to fight Indians, though no whites were yet living in the Rogue River drainage. Along the Rogue, tensions intensified in 1848 at the start of the California Gold Rush , when hundreds of men from

4773-474: The anadromous fish population of the river, plied its lower 12 miles (19 km). During his 32-year tenure, Hume's company caught, processed, and shipped hundreds of tons of salmon from the Rogue. Upriver commercial fishermen also captured large quantities of fish. On a single day in 1913, Grants Pass crews using five drift boats equipped with gill nets caught 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of salmon. In 1877, in connection with his commercial fishery, Hume built

4902-411: The deposition of the sediments that are carried by the waters of a river , where the river merges with a body of slow-moving water or with a body of stagnant water. The creation of a river delta occurs at the river mouth , where the river merges into an ocean , a sea , or an estuary , into a lake , a reservoir , or (more rarely) into another river that cannot carry away the sediment supplied by

5031-577: The 1850s and large-scale commercial fishing that began shortly thereafter. The fishing industry fed demands for salmon in the growing cities of Portland and San Francisco and for canned salmon in England. By the 1880s, Robert Deniston Hume of Astoria had bought land on both sides of the lower Rogue River and established such a big fishing business that he became known as the Salmon King of Oregon. His fleet of gillnetting boats, controlling most of

5160-517: The 20th century. Draining 5,156 square miles (13,350 km), the Rogue River watershed covers parts of Jackson, Josephine, Curry, Douglas, and Klamath counties in southwestern Oregon and Siskiyou and Del Norte counties in northern California . The steep, rugged basin, stretching from the western flank of the Cascade Range to the northeastern flank of the Siskiyou Mountains , varies in elevation from 9,485 feet (2,891 m) at

5289-831: The Cascade Range in Oregon and reach the Pacific Ocean. The others are the Umpqua River and Klamath River . These three Southern Oregon rivers drain mountains south of the Willamette Valley ; the Willamette River and its tributaries drain north along the Willamette Valley into the Columbia River , which starts in British Columbia rather than Oregon. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) operates five stream gauges along

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5418-706: The Cascades rose, the Rogue maintained its flow to the ocean by down-cutting, which created steep narrow gorges and rapids in many places. Bear Creek, a Rogue tributary that flows south to north, marks the boundary between the Western Cascades to the east and the Klamath Mountains to the west. Much more ancient than the upstream mountains are the exotic terranes of the Klamath Mountains to the west. Not until plate tectonics separated North America from Europe and North Africa and pushed it westward did

5547-404: The Gold Ray Dam, a log structure, to generate electricity near Gold Hill. They installed a fish ladder . The California-Oregon Power Company, which later became Pacific Power , acquired the dam in 1921. Replacing the log dam in 1941 with a concrete structure 35 feet (11 m) high, it added a new fish ladder and a fish-counting station. The company closed the hydroelectric plant in 1972, although

5676-416: The Gold Ray Dam. Originally built to provide power for a cement company, it was 3 to 14 feet (0.91 to 4.27 m) high and 900 feet (270 m) long. The dam and a diversion canal later delivered municipal water to the city until Gold Hill installed a pumping station to supply its water. Savage Rapids Dam was 5 miles (8 km) upstream from Grants Pass. Built in 1921 to divert river flows for irrigation,

5805-687: The Grants Pass pluton, the Gold Hill pluton, the Jacksonville pluton, and others. Miners have worked rich deposits of gold, silver, copper , nickel , and other metals in several districts of the Klamaths. Placer mining in the mid-19th century soon led to lode mining for gold. Aside from a mine in eastern Oregon, the Greenback Mine along Grave Creek , a Rogue tributary, was the most productive gold mine in Oregon. In Curry County,

5934-700: The Greek geographer Strabo , the Cynic philosopher Onesicritus of Astypalaea , who accompanied Alexander the Great 's conquests in India , reported that Patalene (the delta of the Indus River ) was "a delta" ( Koinē Greek : καλεῖ δὲ τὴν νῆσον δέλτα , romanized:  kalei de tēn nēson délta , lit.   'he calls the island a delta'). The Roman author Arrian 's Indica states that "the delta of

6063-572: The Kalmiopsis Wilderness are among the world’s best examples of rocks that form the mantle." Metamorphosed peridotite appears as serpentine along the west side of the Illinois River. Chemically unsuited for growing plants, widespread serpentinite in the Klamaths supports sparse vegetation in parts of the watershed. The Josephine peridotite was a source of valuable chromium ore, mined in the region between 1917 and 1960. At

6192-696: The Marial post office closed in 1954, "it was the last postal facility in the United States to still be served only by mule pack trains." The first mail boat was an 18-foot (5.5 m), double-ended craft made of cedar. By 1930, the mail-boat fleet consisted of three 26-foot (7.9 m) boats, equipped with 60-horsepower Model A Ford engines and designed to carry 10 passengers. By the 1960s, rudderless jetboats powered by twin or triple 280-horsepower engines, began to replace propeller-driven boats. The jetboats could safely negotiate shallow riffles , and

6321-503: The Mississippi. For example, a mountain river depositing sediment into a freshwater lake would form this kind of delta. It is commonly a result of homopycnal flow. Such deltas are characterized by a tripartite structure of topset, foreset, and bottomset beds. River water entering the lake rapidly deposits its coarser sediments on the submerged face of the delta, forming steeping dipping foreset beds. The finer sediments are deposited on

6450-522: The Pacific Coast it averages about 80 inches (2,000 mm) a year, whereas at Ashland, which is inland, it averages about 20 inches (510 mm). The average annual precipitation for the entire basin is about 38 inches (970 mm). Most of this falls in winter and spring, and summers are dry. At high elevations in the Cascades, much of the precipitation arrives as snow and infiltrates permeable volcanic soils; snowmelt contributes to stream flows in

6579-659: The Pacific Northwest". Named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1982 by the American Society of Civil Engineers , the 1,898-foot (579 m) structure was the first in the U.S. to use the Freyssinet method of stress control in concrete bridges. It features 7 open- spandrel 230-foot (70 m) arch spans, 18 deck-girder approach spans, and many ornate decorative features such as Art Deco entrance pylons. Several historic bridges cross

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6708-480: The Rogue River Loop Highway ( Oregon Route 260 ) over the river west of the city. The bridge was named for pioneers who settled in the area in the 1870s. Tributary A tributary , or an affluent , is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream ( main stem or "parent" ), river, or a lake . A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean . Tributaries, and

6837-648: The Rogue River canyon, the Kalmiopsis Wilderness , the Illinois River basin, and Mount Ashland , are composed of exotic terranes. Among the oldest rocks in Oregon, some of the formations in these terranes date to the Triassic , nearly 250 million years ago. Between 165 and 170 million years ago, in the Jurassic , faulting consolidated the Klamath terranes offshore during what geologists call

6966-454: The Rogue River flows from the geologically young High Cascades through the somewhat older Western Cascades and then through the more ancient Klamath Mountains. The High Cascades are composed of volcanic rock produced at intervals from about 7.6 million years ago through geologically recent events such as the catastrophic eruption of Mount Mazama in about 5700  BCE . The volcano hurled 12 to 15 cubic miles (50 to 63 km) of ash into

7095-493: The Rogue River. They are located, from uppermost to lowermost, near Prospect, Eagle Point , Central Point , Grants Pass, and Agness. Between 1960 and 2007, the average discharge recorded by the Agness gauge at river mile (RM) 29.7 or river kilometer (RK) 47.8 was 6,622 cubic feet per second (188 m/s). The maximum discharge during this period was 290,000 cubic feet per second (8,200 m/s) on December 23, 1964, and

7224-540: The Rogue and nearby streams and diverts it to power plants, which return the water to the river further downstream. PacifiCorp operates this system, called The Prospect Nos. 1, 2, and 4 Hydroelectric Project. Built in pieces between 1911 and 1944, it includes separate diversion dams on the Middle Fork Rogue River and Red Blanket Creek , and a 9.25-mile (14.89 km) water-transport system of canals, flumes , pipes, and penstocks . Several dams along

7353-410: The Rogue basin. In addition to Lost Creek Lake on the main stem, large reservoirs in the basin include Applegate Lake , Emigrant Lake , and Fish Lake . In 2008, USACE removed part of the Elk Creek Dam and restored Elk Creek to its original channel. Construction on the dam had been halted by a court injunction in the 1980s after about 80 feet (24 m) of the proposed height of 240 feet (73 m)

7482-413: The Rogue between Gold Hill and Grants Pass. The Gold Hill Bridge, designed by McCullough and built in 1927, is the only open-spandrel, barrel-arch bridge in Oregon. Its main arch is 143 feet (44 m) long. Also designed by McCullough, the Rock Point Bridge carries U.S. Route 99 and Oregon Route 234 over the river near the unincorporated community of Rock Point . The 505-foot (154 m) structure has

7611-443: The Rogue, from 7 miles (11.3 km) west of Grants Pass to 11 miles (18 km) east of the mouth at Gold Beach. In 1988, an additional 40 miles (64 km) of the Rogue between Crater Lake National Park and the unincorporated community of Prospect was named Wild and Scenic. Of the river's total length, 124 miles (200 km), about 58 percent is Wild and Scenic. The Rogue is one of only three rivers that start in or east of

7740-410: The Siskiyou orogeny . This three- to five-million-year episode of intense tectonic activity pushed sedimentary rocks deep enough into the mantle to melt them and then forced them to the surface as granitic plutons. Belts of plutons , which contain gold and other precious metals, run through the Klamaths and include the Ashland pluton, the Grayback batholith east of Oregon Caves National Monument ,

7869-472: The ability to pile up and accumulate due to the sediment traveling into a steep subduction trench rather than a shallow continental shelf . There are many other lesser factors that could explain why the majority of river deltas form along passive margins rather than active margins. Along active margins, orogenic sequences cause tectonic activity to form over-steepened slopes, brecciated rocks, and volcanic activity resulting in delta formation to exist closer to

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7998-451: The air, covering much of the western U.S. and Canada with airfall deposits. The volcano's subsequent collapse formed the caldera of Crater Lake. Older and more deeply eroded, the Western Cascades are a range of volcanoes lying west of and merging with the High Cascades. They consist of partly altered volcanic rock from vents in both volcanic provinces, including varied lavas and ash tuffs ranging in age from 0 to 40 million years. As

8127-1256: The basins feeding deltas have reduced river sediment delivery to many deltas in recent decades. This change means that there is less sediment available to maintain delta landforms, and compensate for erosion and sea level rise , causing some deltas to start losing land. Declines in river sediment delivery are projected to continue in the coming decades. The extensive anthropogenic activities in deltas also interfere with geomorphological and ecological delta processes. People living on deltas often construct flood defences which prevent sedimentation from floods on deltas, and therefore means that sediment deposition can not compensate for subsidence and erosion . In addition to interference with delta aggradation , pumping of groundwater , oil , and gas , and constructing infrastructure all accelerate subsidence , increasing relative sea level rise. Anthropogenic activities can also destabilise river channels through sand mining , and cause saltwater intrusion . There are small-scale efforts to correct these issues, improve delta environments and increase environmental sustainability through sedimentation enhancing strategies . While nearly all deltas have been impacted to some degree by humans,

8256-422: The bird's-foot of the Mississippi or Ural river deltas), pushing its mouth into the standing water. As the deltaic lobe advances, the gradient of the river channel becomes lower because the river channel is longer but has the same change in elevation (see slope ). As the gradient of the river channel decreases, the amount of shear stress on the bed decreases, which results in the deposition of sediment within

8385-628: The border between Klamath and Douglas counties near the northern edge of Crater Lake National Park . Although it changes direction many times, it flows generally west for 215 miles (346 km) from the Cascade Range through the Rogue River – Siskiyou National Forest and the Klamath Mountains to the Pacific Ocean at Gold Beach . Communities along its course include Union Creek , Prospect , Trail , Shady Cove , Gold Hill and Rogue River , all in Jackson County ; Grants Pass and Galice in Josephine County ; and Agness , Wedderburn and Gold Beach in Curry County . Significant tributaries include

8514-450: The channel and a rise in the channel bed relative to the floodplain . This destabilizes the river channel. If the river breaches its natural levees (such as during a flood), it spills out into a new course with a shorter route to the ocean, thereby obtaining a steeper, more stable gradient. Typically, when the river switches channels in this manner, some of its flow remains in the abandoned channel. Repeated channel-switching events build up

8643-505: The cities of Grants Pass (23,000) and Cave Junction (1,400). Gold Beach (1,900) is the only city in Curry County (21,100) in the Rogue River basin. Only small, sparsely inhabited parts of the watershed are in Klamath and Douglas counties in Oregon and Siskiyou and Del Norte counties in California. The watershed's average population density is about 32 people per square mile (12.4/km). Many overlapping entities including city, county, state, and federal governments share jurisdiction for parts of

8772-424: The continent acquire, bit by bit, what became the Pacific Northwest , including Oregon. The Klamath Mountains consist of multiple terranes—former volcanic islands and coral reefs and bits of subduction zones, mantle , and seafloor—that merged offshore over vast stretches of time before colliding with North America as a single block about 150 to 130 million years ago. Much of the Rogue River watershed, including

8901-455: The dam was 39 feet (12 m) tall and created a reservoir that seasonally extended up to 2.5 miles (4.0 km) upstream. Its removal began in April 2009, and was completed in October 2009. Twelve newly installed pumps provide river water to the irrigation canals serving 7,500 acres (3,000 ha) of the Grants Pass Irrigation District (GPID). The Ament Dam, built in 1902 by the Golden Drift Mining Company to provide water for mining equipment,

9030-512: The dams on the Rogue main stem, at one time or another "several hundred dams were built on tributaries within the range of salmon migration", most of which supplied water for mining or irrigation. Before 1920, many of these dams made no provision for fish passage; public pressure as well as efforts by turn-of-the-century cannery owner R.D. Hume led to the installation of fish ladders on the most destructive dams. As of 2005, there were about 80 non-hydroelectric dams, mostly small irrigation structures, in

9159-556: The economy due to their well-sorted sand and gravel . Sand and gravel are often quarried from these old deltas and used in concrete for highways , buildings, sidewalks, and landscaping. More than 1 billion tons of sand and gravel are produced in the United States alone. Not all sand and gravel quarries are former deltas, but for ones that are, much of the sorting is already done by the power of water. Urban areas and human habitation tend to be located in lowlands near water access for transportation and sanitation . This makes deltas

9288-789: The feeding river. Etymologically, the term river delta derives from the triangular shape (Δ) of the uppercase Greek letter delta . In hydrology , the dimensions of a river delta are determined by the balance between the watershed processes that supply sediment and the watershed processes that redistribute, sequester, and export the supplied sediment into the receiving basin. River deltas are important in human civilization , as they are major agricultural production centers and population centers. They can provide coastline defence and can impact drinking water supply. They are also ecologically important, with different species' assemblages depending on their landscape position. On geologic timescales , they are also important carbon sinks . A river delta

9417-433: The first humans to inhabit the Rogue River region were nomadic hunters and gatherers. Radiocarbon dating suggests that they arrived in southwestern Oregon at least 8,500 years ago, and that at least 1,500 years before the first contact with whites, the natives established permanent villages along streams. The home villages of various groups shared many cultural elements, such as food, clothing, and shelter types. Intermarriage

9546-416: The first-order tributary being typically the least in size. For example, a second-order tributary would be the result of two or more first-order tributaries combining to form the second-order tributary. Another method is to list tributaries from mouth to source, in the form of a tree structure , stored as a tree data structure . River delta A river delta is a triangular landform created by

9675-611: The fish ladder remained, and biologists from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife used the station to count migrating salmon and steelhead. Jackson County, which owned the dam, had it removed with the help of a $ 5 million federal grant approved in June 2009. The dam was demolished in the summer of 2010. In 2008, the city of Gold Hill removed the last of the Gold Hill Dam, a diversion dam slightly downstream of

9804-414: The flow enters the standing water, it is no longer confined to its channel and expands in width. This flow expansion results in a decrease in the flow velocity , which diminishes the ability of the flow to transport sediment . As a result, sediment drops out of the flow and is deposited as alluvium , which builds up to form the river delta. Over time, this single channel builds a deltaic lobe (such as

9933-506: The fresh stream feeding the head of tidal propagation. As a result, the tributaries are considered to be "subestuaries". The origin and evolution of a tidal freshwater delta involves processes that are typical of all deltas as well as processes that are unique to the tidal freshwater setting. The combination of processes that create a tidal freshwater delta result in a distinct morphology and unique environmental characteristics. Many tidal freshwater deltas that exist today are directly caused by

10062-466: The geomorphology and ecosystem. Deltas are typically classified according to the main control on deposition, which is a combination of river, wave , and tidal processes, depending on the strength of each. The other two factors that play a major role are landscape position and the grain size distribution of the source sediment entering the delta from the river. Fluvial-dominated deltas are found in areas of low tidal range and low wave energy. Where

10191-456: The ground, and covered with split sugar pine or red cedar planks. People left the villages during about half of the year to gather camas bulbs, sugar-pine bark, acorns , and berries, and hunted deer and elk to supplement their main food, salmon . The total early-1850s native population of southern Oregon, including the Umpqua, Coos , Coquille, and Chetco watersheds as well as the Rogue,

10320-451: The handedness is from the point of view of an observer facing upstream. For instance, Steer Creek has a left tributary which is called Right Fork Steer Creek. These naming conventions are reflective of the circumstances of a particular river's identification and charting: people living along the banks of a river, with a name known to them, may then float down the river in exploration, and each tributary joining it as they pass by appears as

10449-648: The hatchery in 1973 to offset the loss of fish habitat and spawning grounds in areas blocked by construction of the Lost Creek Dam on the main stem and the Applegate and Elk Creek dams on Rogue tributaries. It is the third-largest salmon and steelhead hatchery in the United States. In 1926, author Zane Grey bought a miner's cabin at Winkle Bar, near the river. He wrote Western books at this location, including his 1929 novel Rogue River Feud . Another of his books, Tales of Fresh Water Fishing (1928), included

10578-402: The idea for many years, in early 1895 it agreed to a one-year trial of the water route, established a post office at Price's log cabin at Big Bend, and named Price postmaster . Price's job, for which he received no pay during the trial year, included running the post office and making sure that the mail boat made one round trip a week. He named the new post office Illahe . The name derives from

10707-549: The inland Rogue River natives when he crossed the Siskiyou Mountains to look for beaver. Friction between Indians and whites was relatively minor during these early encounters; however, in 1834, an HBC expedition led by Michel Laframboise was reported to have killed 11 Rogue River natives, and shortly thereafter a party led by an American trapper, Ewing Young , shot and killed at least two more. The name Rogue River apparently began with French fur trappers who called

10836-424: The joining of tributaries. The opposite to a tributary is a distributary , a river or stream that branches off from and flows away from the main stream. Distributaries are most often found in river deltas . Right tributary , or right-bank tributary , and left tributary , or left-bank tributary , describe the orientation of the tributary relative to the flow of the main stem river. These terms are defined from

10965-406: The lake bottom beyond this steep slope as more gently dipping bottomset beds. Behind the delta front, braided channels deposit the gently dipping beds of the topset on the delta plain. While some authors describe both lacustrine and marine locations of Gilbert deltas, others note that their formation is more characteristic of the freshwater lakes, where it is easier for the river water to mix with

11094-528: The lakewater faster (as opposed to the case of a river falling into the sea or a salt lake, where less dense fresh water brought by the river stays on top longer). Gilbert himself first described this type of delta on Lake Bonneville in 1885. Elsewhere, similar structures occur, for example, at the mouths of several creeks that flow into Okanagan Lake in British Columbia and form prominent peninsulas at Naramata , Summerland , and Peachland . In wave-dominated deltas, wave-driven sediment transport controls

11223-583: The land of the Indians is made by the Indus river no less than is the case with that of Egypt". As a generic term for the landform at the mouth of the river, the word delta is first attested in the English-speaking world in the late 18th century, in the work of Edward Gibbon . River deltas form when a river carrying sediment reaches a body of water, such as a lake, ocean, or a reservoir . When

11352-432: The largest could carry nearly 50 passengers. Rogue mail-boat excursions, which had been growing more popular for several decades, began in the 1970s to include trips to as far upriver as Blossom Bar, 20 miles (32 km) above Agness. As of 2010, jet boats, functioning mainly as excursion craft, still deliver mail between Gold Beach and Agness. The Rogue River mail boat company is "one of only two mail carriers delivering

11481-781: The lower Rogue passes through the Galice Formation, metamorphosed shale , and other rocks formed when a small oceanic basin in the merging Klamath terranes was thrust over other Klamath rocks about 155 million years ago. The lowest part of the seafloor of the Josephine Basin, as this ancient sea came to be called, rests on top of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, where it is known as the Josephine ophiolite . Some of its rocks are peridotite , reddish-brown when exposed to oxygen but very dark green inside. According to geologist Ellen Morris Bishop, "These odd tawny peridotites in

11610-418: The lower Rogue. As of 2010, the Rogue has one of the two remaining rural mail-boat routes in the United States. Dam building and removal along the Rogue has generated controversy for more than a century; an early fish-blocking dam (Ament) was dynamited by vigilantes , mostly disgruntled salmon fishermen. By 2010, all of the main-stem dams downstream of a huge flood-control structure 157 miles (253 km) from

11739-685: The lower river. By then, fighting had also ended near the coast, where, before retreating upstream, a separate group of natives had killed about 30 whites and burned their cabins near what later became Gold Beach. Most of the Rogue River Indians were removed in 1856 to reservations further north. About 1,400 were sent to the Coast Reservation , later renamed the Siletz Reservation . To protect 400 natives still in danger of attack at Table Rock, Joel Palmer ,

11868-473: The mail by boat in the United States"; the other is along the Snake River in eastern Oregon. For thousands of years, salmon was a reliable food source for Native Americans living along the Rogue. Salmon migrations were so huge that early settlers claimed they could hear the fish moving upstream. These large runs continued into the 20th century despite damage to spawning beds caused by gold mining in

11997-595: The main stem river into which they flow, drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater , leading the water out into an ocean. The Irtysh is a chief tributary of the Ob river and is also the longest tributary river in the world with a length of 4,248 km (2,640 mi). The Madeira River is the largest tributary river by volume in the world with an average discharge of 31,200 m /s (1.1 million cu ft/s). A confluence , where two or more bodies of water meet, usually refers to

12126-548: The mid-1960s, a geologist also discovered the beak and teeth of an ichthyosaur in the Otter Point Formation. In 2018, a geologist from the University of Oregon found a toe bone of a plant-eating dinosaur near Mitchell in the east-central part of the state where the coast lay 100 million years ago. This discovery has also been billed as the first dinosaur fossil find in Oregon. Archaeologists believe that

12255-545: The minimum discharge was 608 cubic feet per second (17 m/s) on July 9 and 10, 1968. This was from a drainage basin of 3,939 square miles (10,202 km), or about 76 percent of the entire Rogue watershed. The maximum flow occurred between December 1964 and January 1965 during the Christmas flood of 1964 , which was rated by the National Weather Service as one of Oregon's top 10 weather events of

12384-435: The mountains. Until the 1890s, these settlers remained relatively isolated from the outside world. In 1883, one of the settlers, Elijah H. Price, proposed a permanent mail route by boat up the Rogue River from Ellensburg (later renamed Gold Beach) to Big Bend, about 40 miles (64 km) upstream. The route, Price told the government, would serve perhaps 11 families and no towns. Although the Post Office Department resisted

12513-499: The mouth of Little Butte Creek in October 1855. After a volunteer militia attacked them, killing 23 men, women, and children, they fled downriver, attacking whites from Gold Hill to Galice Creek. Confronted by volunteers and regular army troops, the Indians at first repulsed them; however, after nearly 200 volunteers launched an all-day assault on the remaining natives, the war ended at Big Bend (at RM 35 or RK 56) on

12642-650: The mouth of the Rogue River, along the coast of Curry County, is the Otter Point Formation , a mélange of metamorphosed sedimentary rocks such as shales, sandstones , and chert . Although the rocks formed in the Jurassic, evidence suggests that they faulted north as part of the Gold Beach Terrane after the Klamaths merged with North America. Oregon's only dinosaur fragments , those of a hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaur, were found here. In

12771-528: The mouth of the Rogue River, and Indians visited the ship in canoes. In 1826, Alexander Roderick McLeod of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) led an overland expedition from HBC's regional headquarters in Fort Vancouver to as far south as the Rogue (4 miles inland) along with botanist David Douglas . In 1827, an HBC expedition led by Peter Skene Ogden made the first direct contact between whites and

12900-445: The new trail later in 1846, passing through Rogue Indian homelands between the headwaters of Bear Creek and the future site of Grants Pass and crossing the Rogue about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) downstream of it. Despite fears on both sides, violence in the watershed in the 1830s and 1840s was limited; "Indians seemed interested in speeding whites on their way, and whites were happy to get through the region without being attacked." In 1847,

13029-551: The office Agnes after his daughter, but a transcription error added an extra "s" and the name became Agness . Upriver, a third post office, established in 1903, was named Marial after another postmaster's daughter. Marial, at (RM) 48 (RK 77), is about 13 miles (21 km) upriver from Illahe and 21 miles (34 km) from Agness. To avoid difficult rapids, carriers delivered the mail by mule between Illahe and Marial, and after 1908 most mail traveling beyond Agness went by mule. The Illahe post office closed in 1943, and when

13158-524: The onset of or changes in historical land use, especially deforestation , intensive agriculture , and urbanization . These ideas are well illustrated by the many tidal freshwater deltas prograding into Chesapeake Bay along the east coastline of the United States. Research has demonstrated that the accumulating sediments in this estuary derive from post-European settlement deforestation, agriculture, and urban development. Other rivers, particularly those on coasts with significant tidal range , do not form

13287-406: The opposite bank before approaching the confluence. An early tributary is a tributary that joins the main stem river closer to its source than its mouth, that is, before the river's midpoint ; a late tributary joins the main stem further downstream, closer to its mouth than to its source, that is, after the midpoint. In the United States, where tributaries sometimes have the same name as

13416-476: The perspective of looking downstream, that is, facing the direction the water current of the main stem is going. In a navigational context, if one were floating on a raft or other vessel in the main stream, this would be the side the tributary enters from as one floats past; alternately, if one were floating down the tributary, the main stream meets it on the opposite bank of the tributary. This information may be used to avoid turbulent water by moving towards

13545-487: The result of this process is the Wax Lake Delta . In both of these cases, depositional processes force redistribution of deposition from areas of high deposition to areas of low deposition. This results in the smoothing of the planform (or map-view) shape of the delta as the channels move across its surface and deposit sediment. Because the sediment is laid down in this fashion, the shape of these deltas approximates

13674-453: The river La Riviere aux Coquins because they regarded the natives as rogues ( coquins ). In 1835, Rogue River people killed four whites in a party of eight who were traveling from Oregon to California. Two years later, two of the survivors and others on a cattle drive organized by Young killed the first two Indians they met north of the Klamath River. The number of whites entering the Rogue River watershed greatly increased after 1846, when

13803-579: The river delta, causing the delta to retreat. For deltas that form further upriver in an estuary, there are complex yet quantifiable linkages between winds, tides, river discharge, and delta water levels. Erosion is also an important control in tide-dominated deltas, such as the Ganges Delta , which may be mainly submarine, with prominent sandbars and ridges. This tends to produce a "dendritic" structure. Tidal deltas behave differently from river-dominated and wave-dominated deltas, which tend to have

13932-666: The river into which they feed, they are called forks . These are typically designated by compass direction. For example, the American River in California receives flow from its North, Middle, and South forks. The Chicago River 's North Branch has the East, West, and Middle Fork; the South Branch has its South Fork, and used to have a West Fork as well (now filled in). Forks are sometimes designated as right or left. Here,

14061-622: The river mouth had been removed. Aside from dams, threats to salmon include high water temperatures. Although sometimes too warm for salmonids , the main stem Rogue is relatively clean, ranking between 85 and 97 (on a scale of 0 to 100) on the Oregon Water Quality Index (OWQI). Although the Rogue Valley near Medford is partly urban, the average population density of the Rogue watershed is only about 32 people per square mile (12 per km). Several historic bridges cross

14190-423: The river near the city. Salmon could pass the dam during high water, but most were blocked: "For half a mile below the dam, the river was crowded with fish throughout the summer." After a flood destroyed this dam in 1905, it was replaced by a 6-foot (1.8 m) dam that, like its predecessor, lacked a fish ladder. By 1940, the dam had deteriorated to the point that it no longer blocked migratory fish. In addition to

14319-503: The river near the more populated areas. Many public parks, hiking trails, and campgrounds are near the river, which flows largely through forests, including national forests . Biodiversity in many parts of the basin is high; the Klamath-Siskiyou temperate coniferous forests , which extend into the southwestern Rogue basin, are among the four most diverse of this kind in the world. The Rogue River begins at Boundary Springs on

14448-414: The river water is nearly equal in density to the basin water, the delta is characterized by homopycnal flow , in which the river water rapidly mixes with basin water and abruptly dumps most of its sediment load. Where the river water has a higher density than basin water, typically from a heavy load of sediment, the delta is characterized by hyperpycnal flow in which the river water hugs the basin bottom as

14577-521: The river's middle reaches were removed or destroyed during the first half of the 20th century. After decades of controversy about water rights, costs, migratory fish, and environmental impacts, removal or modification of remaining middle-reach dams as well as a partly finished dam on Elk Creek, a major tributary of the Rogue, began in 2008. The de-construction projects were all meant to improve salmon runs by allowing more fish to reach suitable spawning grounds. In 1904, brothers C.R. and Frank Ray built

14706-399: The sediment is never piled up in thick sequences due to the sediment traveling and depositing in deep subduction trenches. At the mouth of a river, the change in flow conditions can cause the river to drop any sediment it is carrying. This sediment deposition can generate a variety of landforms, such as deltas, sand bars, spits, and tie channels. Landforms at the river mouth drastically alter

14835-514: The sediment source. When sediment does not travel far from the source, sediments that build up are coarser grained and more loosely consolidated, therefore making delta formation more difficult. Tectonic activity on active margins causes the formation of river deltas to form closer to the sediment source which may affect channel avulsion , delta lobe switching, and auto cyclicity. Active margin river deltas tend to be much smaller and less abundant but may transport similar amounts of sediment. However,

14964-424: The shape of the delta, and much of the sediment emanating from the river mouth is deflected along the coastline. The relationship between waves and river deltas is quite variable and largely influenced by the deepwater wave regimes of the receiving basin. With a high wave energy near shore and a steeper slope offshore, waves will make river deltas smoother. Waves can also be responsible for carrying sediments away from

15093-418: The smaller stream designated the little fork, the larger either retaining its name unmodified, or receives the designation big . Tributaries are sometimes listed starting with those nearest to the source of the river and ending with those nearest to the mouth of the river . The Strahler stream order examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of first, second, third and higher orders, with

15222-432: The streams are seen to diverge by the cardinal direction (north, south, east, or west) in which they proceed upstream, sometimes a third stream entering between two others is designated the middle fork; or the streams are distinguished by the relative height of one to the other, as one stream descending over a cataract into another becomes the upper fork, and the one it descends into, the lower ; or by relative volume:

15351-541: The structure Caveman because the Redwood Highway ( U.S. Route 199 ) that crosses the bridge passes near Oregon Caves National Monument , about 50 miles (80 km) south of Grants Pass. Slightly downstream of Grants Pass, the Robertson Bridge, built around 1909, is a 583-foot (178 m) three-span, steel, through- truss structure moved downriver in 1929 to make way for the Caveman Bridge. It carries

15480-560: The summit of Mount McLoughlin in the Cascades to 0 feet (0 m), where the basin meets the ocean. The basin borders the watersheds of the Williamson River , Upper Klamath Lake , and the upper Klamath River on the east; the lower Klamath, Smith , and Chetco rivers on the south; the North Umpqua , South Umpqua , Coquille , and Sixes rivers on the north, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. In 2000, Jackson County had

15609-656: The trailing edges of passive margins due to the majority of large rivers such as the Mississippi , Nile , Amazon , Ganges , Indus , Yangtze , and Yellow River discharging along passive continental margins. This phenomenon is due mainly to three factors: topography , basin area, and basin elevation. Topography along passive margins tend to be more gradual and widespread over a greater area enabling sediment to pile up and accumulate over time to form large river deltas. Topography along active margins tends to be steeper and less widespread, which results in sediments not having

15738-531: The upper Rogue. In 1899, he built a hatchery near Wedderburn, across the river from Gold Beach, and until the time of his death in 1908 he had salmon eggs shipped to it from the Elk Creek station. Based on variations in the size of the yearly catch, Hume and others believed his methods of fish-propagation to be successful. However, as salmon runs declined over time despite the hatcheries, recreational fishing interests began to oppose large-scale operations. In 1910,

15867-580: The upper basin during the dry months. Along the Illinois River in the lower basin, most of the precipitation falls as rain on shallow soils; rapid runoff leads to high flows during winter storms and low flows during the dry summer. Average monthly temperatures for the whole basin range from about 68 °F (20 °C) in July and August to about 40 °F (4 °C) in December. Within the basin, local temperatures vary with elevation. Arising near Crater Lake,

15996-413: The watershed, including a Bear Creek tributary called Jackson Creek, where they established a mining camp in 1852 at the site of what later became Jacksonville. Indian attacks on miners that year led to U.S. Army intervention and fighting near Table Rock between Indians and the combined forces of professional soldiers and volunteer miner militias. John P. Gaines , the new territorial governor, negotiated

16125-696: The watershed. About 60 percent of the basin is publicly owned and is managed by the United States Forest Service , the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the United States Bureau of Reclamation . Under provisions of the federal Clean Water Act , the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), assisted by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and other agencies in both states,

16254-507: Was common, and many people understood dialects of more than one of the three language groups spoken in the region. The Native Americans (Indians) included Tututni people near the coast and, further upstream, groups of Shasta Costa , Upper Rogue River Athabaskan tribes (Dakubetede and Tal-tvsh-dan-ni), Shasta , Takelma , and Latgawa . Houses in the villages varied somewhat, but were often about 12 feet (3.7 m) wide and 15 to 20 feet (4.6 to 6.1 m) long, framed with posts sunk into

16383-732: Was first coined by Alexander von Humboldt for the middle reaches of the Orinoco River , which he visited in 1800. Other prominent examples include the Inner Niger Delta , Peace–Athabasca Delta , the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta , and the Sistan delta of Iran. The Danube has one in the valley on the Slovak–Hungarian border between Bratislava and Iža . In some cases, a river flowing into

16512-482: Was reached. Further controversy delayed the notching for two decades. Elk Creek enters the Rogue River 5 miles (8.0 km) downstream from Lost Creek Lake. Among the many bridges that cross the Rogue River is the Isaac Lee Patterson Bridge , which carries U.S. Route 101 over the river at Gold Beach. Designed by Conde B. McCullough and built in 1931, it is "one of the most notable bridges in

16641-597: Was slightly upriver of Grants Pass. After the company failed to keep promises to provide irrigation and electric power to the vicinity and because the dam was a "massive fish killer", vigilantes destroyed part of the dam with dynamite in 1912. The damaged dam was completely removed before construction of the Savage Rapids Dam in 1921. In 1890, the Grants Pass Power Supply Company had built a log dam 12 feet (3.7 m) high, across

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