On June 9, 1534, French explorer Jacques Cartier became the first European (White) man to discover the mighty St. Lawrence River, the gateway into North America for European explorers.
Digging
One of the mightiest rivers in the world, the St. Lawrence River can be described as consisting of all the Great Lakes as well as the Niagara River and the portion we traditionally refer to as the St. Lawrence itself. Draining over 1 million square kilometers of the United States of America and Canada, the St. Lawrence has a discharge even greater than that of the Mississippi River, which has an area drained 3 times the size of the St. Lawrence drainage, an incredible 16,800 cubic meters of water per second average discharge.
The 1959 completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway system of canals and locks has allowed ocean going traffic to travel to and from the Great Lakes ports of Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo and Toronto among others, making the St. Lawrence one of the most important shipping channels in the world.
