Little Missouri River (North Dakota)
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The Little Missouri River is a tributary of the Missouri River, Template:Convert long, in the northern Great Plains of the United States.<ref name="Personius">Template:Cite journal</ref> Rising in northeastern Wyoming, in western Crook County about Template:Convert west of Devils Tower,<ref>Template:Cite map</ref> it flows northeastward, across a corner of southeastern Montana, and into South Dakota. In South Dakota, it flows northward through the Badlands into North Dakota, crossing the Little Missouri National Grassland and all three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. In the north unit of the park, it turns eastward and flows into the Missouri in Dunn County at Lake Sakakawea, where it forms an arm of the reservoir Template:Convert long called Little Missouri Bay and joins the main channel of the Missouri about Template:Convert northeast of Killdeer.<ref>Template:Cite map</ref>
The highly seasonal runoff from badlands and other treeless landscapes along the Little Missouri carries heavy loads of eroded sediment downstream.<ref name="USGS description">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The sedimentary layers, which extend from the headwaters in Wyoming all the way to the mouth in North Dakota, vary in age, but most of the beds along the river belong to the Bullion Creek and Sentinel Butte formations, both deposited during the Paleocene (about 66 to 56 million years ago).<ref name="Bluemle"/> The deposits include siltstone, claystone, sandstone, and lignite coal laid down in a coastal plain during the Laramide orogeny.<ref name="Bluemle">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
See alsoEdit
- List of rivers of North Dakota
- List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem)
- List of rivers of Montana
- List of rivers of South Dakota
- List of rivers of Wyoming
- Montana Stream Access Law
