Snake River

The Snake River is a river in the western part of the United States. The Snake River is 1,038 miles (1,670 km) in length, and is the Columbia River's main tributary. The Lewis and Clark expedition (1803-6) was the first major U.S. exploration of the river, and the Snake was once well-known as the Lewis River.
The Snake River's many hydroelectric power plants are a main source of electricity in the region. Its watershed provides irrigation for various projects, with the Minidoka, Boise, Palisades, and Owyhee projects by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, as well as a variety of private projects such as at Twin Falls. However, these dams have also had an adverse environmental effect on wildlife, most notably on wild salmon migrations.
The Snake runs through a number of gorges, as well as one of the deepest in the world, Hells Canyon, with a maximum depth of 7,900 feet (2,410 m).
The name "Snake" possibly derived from an S-shaped (snake) sign which the Shoshone Indians made with their hands to mimic swimming salmon. Variant names of the river have included: