Since 1870, the Hatton Ferry in Hatton, VA, has been helping people and vehicles cross the James River - under pole power [ferry is cable-assisted, and poling starts at 3:42]. Before the nation was connected by a network of bridges, pole barges like this were a common means of transportation across smaller waterways. Hatton Ferry is thought to be the very last working survivor of those thousands of the pole-driven ferries; but today, due to DOT budget constraints, it may go out of existence. [more inside]
posted by Miko on Jul 1, 2009 - 21 comments

"On Jan. 15, 2009, a few Canadian geese with bad timing became snarge, a steely pilot became a hero, and the world became fascinated with images of a jet splashing into the Hudson River and then floating calmly as passengers crowded its wings.

But until now, few people have seen the equally surprising pictures of the second half of this story: when a salvage team used the biggest floating crane on the East Coast to pluck the ill-fated Airbus A320 from the frigid water."
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey on May 13, 2009 - 51 comments

The Big River Show. So, you've decided spend your summer floating down the Mississippi River. You're going to need a 35-year-old pontoon boat, the proper attire, and something to snack on. Oh, and you might not want to go during a 500 year flood. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Aug 4, 2008 - 14 comments

For over a thousand years, fishermen all over the world have been using cormorants to help them fish in lakes and rivers. In Gifu, Gifu Prefecture, Japan, cormorant fishing on the Nagara river has continued uninterrupted for the past 1,300 years. In Guilin and Yangshuo, China, cormorant birds are famous for fishing on the shallow Lijiang River. The islands of the Beaver Island archipelago in Northern Lake Michigan host what may be the densest concentration of the big, black diving birds on the continent, an estimated 50,000 that eat about 9 million pounds of fish from the surrounding waters from spring through fall. Fishermen and tourism interests want the state and federal governments to cut the number of double-crested cormorants around the Beaver Island group by half, raising the ire of bird lovers and animal-rights activists who say the cormorants aren't at the root of the problem.
posted by mrducts on Jul 1, 2008 - 13 comments

Over The River Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado. The Mastaba of Adu Dhabi Project for the United Arab Emirates [more inside]
posted by hortense on Feb 4, 2008 - 9 comments

While God was fooling around with his celestial SimCity control panel, he accidentally built a river right through the middle of a road. [more inside]
posted by brain_drain on Nov 9, 2007 - 47 comments

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the bed and banks under all rivers, lakes, and streams that are navigable, for title purposes, are owned by the states, held in trust for the public. Mineral extraction interests and other parties often challenge this 'public use' designation by using/abusing the navigabilty designation to keep out fisherman and other recreational users in order to exploit the rivers for private gain. The Upper Sacramento River and McCloud Rivers of Northern California are the latest battleground in recreational river access. In what has become all too common, an ugly fight pitting sportsmen and nature enthusiasts against private interests is unfolding. One blogger has led the good fight to keep the rivers public. He could use your help... but it doesn't look good, and there is not much time!
posted by james_cpi on Nov 9, 2007 - 10 comments

Biggest 3D street painting ever. As part of the 2007 Moose Jaw Prairie Arts Festival, German painter Edgar Müller and a team of artists turned River Street into, well, a river. Müller and his associate Manfred Stader have done other interesting trompe-l'oiel works around the world.
posted by gottabefunky on Oct 15, 2007 - 9 comments

Interesting photos and video of Montreal's standing wave, which has become something of a surfing hot spot (.mov) even though it is 400 km from the nearest ocean. Standing wave surfing is also big in Munich. Perhaps fallen Baywatch star David Hasselhoff had something to do with it?
posted by furtive on May 5, 2007 - 51 comments

Martin Strel finishes 3272-mile swim through the Amazon River. BBC has an FAQ, and here are videos of Strel passing various checkpoints. Thing to avoid while swimming in the Amazon: the toothpick fish, aka the candiru. [previously]
posted by phaedon on Apr 9, 2007 - 37 comments

Kaskaskia: The western Illinois town stuck in eastern Missouri. First state capital, bustling economic center and a leading town in the state. That is, until the flood of 1881 cut a new river channel, destroying most of the town and leaving the remnants on the Missouri side of the Mississippi. Whether or not the disaster was due to a murdered lover's curse, the (remaining) residents petitioned that the state line be kept along the older riverbed. The town's population, once about 7000, now consists of a meager nine. [wiki]
posted by luftmensch on Mar 30, 2007 - 11 comments

An Otter Family Album — for over 20 years, zoologist/educator J. Scott Shannon has been observing the "Clan", five generations of ocean-going river otters living in the bay [YouTube] below the historic town of Trinidad on California's northwest coast.
posted by cenoxo on Nov 13, 2006 - 25 comments

Ahmad Nadalian's work can be found all over the world. He is an artist that carves symbols on rocks and then leaves them at the site where they were created (sometimes burying them).
posted by tellurian on Aug 2, 2006 - 7 comments

Texas Riparian Law I found this intriguing because I 1) live in Texas, 2) have walked many Texas creekbottoms, 3) have a lot of lawyer friends, and 4) as an English major, find the language somehow beautiful.
posted by rleamon on Jun 29, 2006 - 25 comments

FOVICKS - Friends Of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures - a photo essay on the concrete geometries of the Los Angeles River flood control channels. [via inhabitat]
posted by carter on Mar 31, 2006 - 24 comments

Afro-Celtic music inspired by the Baka, pygmies living in the Central African rainforest of Cameroon. Rivers running through the rainforest are one of the alluring Bakas' favorite instruments, the water drum. Highly inventive and constantly changing, the vocal polyphony and the polyrhythmic sounds of hands and drums are prodigious achievements which astonish modern composers. There are various albums.
posted by nickyskye on Mar 16, 2006 - 11 comments

Blogger goes to a nyc chinatown fish market, buys a fish, and then sets the twenty pounder free. A photo essay. but the question is, will it live?
posted by tsarfan on Apr 1, 2005 - 63 comments

A man and his rocket car. As documentaries enjoy an unprecedented level of popularity and financial success, it's high time that an obscure Canadian National Film Board doc from 1981 was (re)discovered. The story of Ken Carter, who spends several years and millions of dollars of other people's money in the single-minded pursuit of one goal: jumping a jet-powered car across the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the United States. What is it with Canadians and insane dreams?
posted by The Card Cheat on Sep 24, 2004 - 10 comments

The Chicago River was essentially the city of Chicago's cesspool until the construction of the Chicago Ship & Sanitary Canal, which connected the Chicago River to the Mississippi Basin in 1900. Now there's serious talk of intentionally returning a section of the river to a cesspool-like state, by dumping untreated sewage and (possibly) toxic chemicals into the river. The purpose: to prevent invasive species such as the Asian Carp and the Round Goby from using this connection to cross between the Great Lakes and Mississippi basins. Is it ever possible to avoid unintended consequences in environmental engineering? And is it necessary to "go nuclear", so to speak, to try to correct them?
[Second link RealAudio; transcript here.]
posted by Johnny Assay on Mar 4, 2003 - 9 comments

River found under Sahara Russian satellites have discovered a river flowing 700 feet under the Sahara. It carries enough water to supply 50,000 people and is said to surge with "colossal power". ---the thing that interests me most about this is the economic impact that this will have on the area. seeing as how wars are being fought over water supplies in the area, what do you see as the most likely result of this discovery??
posted by daHIFI on Sep 17, 2002 - 24 comments