Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Williamette River

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Williamette River[edit]

This nomination predates the introduction in April 2014 of article-specific subpages for nominations and has been created from the edit history of Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests.

This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 1, 2013 by BencherliteTalk 19:51, 26 August 2013‎ (UTC)[reply]

Williamette River as it passes through Portland, Oregon
The Willamette River is a major tributary of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest of North America. The Willamette's main stem is 187 miles (301 km) long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward between the Oregon Coast Range and the Cascade Range, the river and its tributaries form the Willamette Valley, which contains two-thirds of Oregon's population. The state's largest city, Portland, surrounds the Willamette's mouth at the Columbia. Humans began living in the watershed over 10,000 years ago. There were once many tribal villages along the lower river and in the area around its mouth on the Columbia, and some peoples lived throughout the upper basin. Due to prolific rainfall in the basin and sediments from the glacial Missoula Floods, the Willamette Valley is one of the most fertile agricultural regions in North America, and was thus the destination of many 19th-century pioneers traveling west along the Oregon Trail. Since 1900, more than 15 large dams and many smaller ones have been built in the Willamette's drainage basin. They are used primarily to produce hydroelectricity, to store water for irrigation, and to prevent flooding. The river and its tributaries support 60 fish species, including many species of salmon and trout; this is despite the dams, other alterations, and pollution (especially on the river's lower reaches). (Full article...)