Porcupine
Porcupine is a mapped river in the YearMaps hydrographic index. River courses organise settlement, agriculture and frontier-making more durably than any political boundary, and this reach is indexed against the dams, lakes and cities within its catchment.
- Feature Class
- River
- Coordinates
- 67.17°, -141.71°
About Porcupine
The Porcupine River (Ch’ôonjik in Gwich’in) is a 916 km (569 mi) tributary of the Yukon River in Canada and the United States. It rises in the Ogilvie Mountains north of Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. From there it flows north through the community of Old Crow, veers southwest into the U.S. state of Alaska, and enters the larger river at Fort Yukon, Alaska. It derives its name from the Gwich'in word for the river, Ch'oonjik, or "Porcupine Quill River".
The Porcupine caribou herd, whose range includes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, gets its name from its calving grounds around the Porcupine River.
Possible (but disputed) evidence of the oldest known human habitation in North America comes from a cave on one of the Porcupine's tributaries, the Bluefish River. Many apparently human-modified animal bones have been discovered in the Bluefish Caves. Radiocarbon dating has assessed them as 25,000 to 40,000 years old—several thousand years earlier than the generally accepted date for human habitation of North America.
Encyclopedic summary adapted from Wikipedia: Porcupine River (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Porcupine: Key Facts
| Length | 916 km |
|---|---|
| Average discharge | 650 m³/s |
| Drainage basin | 61,400 km² |
| Source | Whitestone River |
| Mouth | Yukon River |
| Drainage system | Yukon River Basin |
| Tributaries | Bell River, Old Crow River, Coleen River, Sheenjek River, Rapid River, Draanjik River, Sucker River, Grass River |
Facts from Wikidata Q284603 (CC0).
Major River Dossiers
Hand-written studies of the great river systems of history.
Connected Reaches
Nearby watercourses in the same drainage network.
Water Bodies in the Catchment
Settlements Along the Reach
Hydraulic Infrastructure Nearby
Surrounding Terrain
Porcupine: Quick Answers
- Where is Porcupine?
- Porcupine is located in Canada and United States, at 67.1658° N, 141.7139° W.
- Are there dams on the Porcupine?
- No dam on the Porcupine is recorded in the YearMaps dam index, which covers major structures only.