The Willamette River is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. 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, a basin that contains two-thirds of Oregon's population, including the state capital, Salem, and the state's largest city, Portland, which surrounds the Willamette's mouth at the Columbia.
The Willamette passing through Downtown Portland in the 1980s
Ocean-going cargo ship anchored at the mouth of the Willamette
The Multnomah Channel from the Sauvie Island Bridge
The Oregon Route 34 bridge across the Willamette River at Corvallis is a mid-valley highway crossing.
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river forms in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The river is 1,243 miles long, and its largest tributary is the Snake River. Its drainage basin is roughly the size of France and extends into seven states of the United States and one Canadian province. The fourth-largest river in the United States by volume, the Columbia has the greatest flow of any river entering the Pacific outside of Asia, and the 36th greatest discharge of any river in the world.
Columbia River from Rowena Crest with Interstate 84 on the right
Course of the Columbia River
The Columbia River Gorge facing east toward Beacon Rock
Drumheller Channels, part of the Channeled Scablands formed by the Missoula Floods