Mackenzie River

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The Alaskan mountain ranges and the Mackenzie and Yukon river basins and their drainage networks.

Yellowknife on the shore of Great Slave Lake (source of the Mackenzie River), west-central Northwest Territories, Canada.

Pingo (hill caused by upheaval of permafrost) in the Mackenzie River delta near Tuktoyaktuk, northwestern Northwest Territories, Can.

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Mackenzie River summary

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Geography & Travel

Mackenzie River

river, Canada

Written by J. Lewis Robinson

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Mackenzie River, major river system in the drainage pattern of northwestern North America. Its basin is the largest in Canada, and it is exceeded on the continent only by the Mississippi-Missouri system. The Mackenzie system drains an area of some 697,000 square miles (1,805,200 square km), which is almost as large as Mexico. From the headwaters of the Finlay River, which flows into Williston Lake (the impounded waters of the Peace River) west of the Rocky Mountains, the entire river system runs for 2,635 miles (4,241 km) through the lake-strewn Canadian north to empty into the cold and often-frozen waters ...(100 of 3072 words)

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