Shoshone River

This article is about Shoshone River, Wyoming (also known as Stinking Water River). For Stinking Water River, Montana, see Ruby River.

The Shoshone River is a 100-mile (160 km) long river in northern Wyoming, United States. Its headwaters are in the Absaroka Range in Shoshone National Forest. It ends when it runs into the Big Horn River near Lovell, Wyoming. Cities it runs near or through are Cody, Powell, Byron, and Lovell. Near Cody, it runs through a volcanically active region of fumaroles known as Colter's Hell.^[3] This contributed to the river being named on old maps of Wyoming as the Stinking Water River.

Shoshone River
South Fork Shoshone River in Park County, Wyoming, 1923.
Map of the Bighorn River basin including the Shoshone River
Native name	Aashilitshia (Shoshoni) Aashbikkaashée (Shoshoni)[1]
Location
Country	United States
State	Wyoming
Cities	Cody, Wyoming, Powell, Wyoming, Lovell, Wyoming
Physical characteristics
Source
• location	Absaroka Range, Wyoming
• coordinates	44°30′04″N 109°11′02″W[2]
Mouth	Big Horn River
• location	Lovell, Wyoming
• coordinates	44°51′44″N 108°12′17″W[2]
Length	100 mi (160 km)
Basin size	2,989 sq mi (7,740 km2)
Discharge
• location	below Buffalo Bill Dam
• average	1,037 cu ft/s (29.4 m3/s)
• minimum	59 cu ft/s (1.7 m3/s)
• maximum	17,300 cu ft/s (490 m3/s)

Buffalo Bill Dam on the Shoshone River, September 2007

The current name was established in 1901 due to popular demand.^[2]

West of Cody the river is impounded in Shoshone Canyon by the Buffalo Bill Dam, created as part of the Shoshone project; one of the nation's first water conservation projects. A number of hot springs along the Shoshone were drowned by the reservoir.^[3] Upstream of Buffalo Bill Reservoir the Shoshone splits into the North Fork, which follows a long canyon down from the Absaroka Range to the vicinity of the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park, and the South Fork, which originates at the southern end of the Absarokas.

See also

• Rivers portal
• Wyoming portal

• List of rivers in Wyoming
• Mummy Cave, an alcove eroded into a cliff face by the North Fork of the Shoshone that has yielded evidence of 9000 years of occupation
• Shoshonite