New England Rivers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Connecticut River

The Connecticut River drains into Long Island Sound. As settlers moved north they took the name of the river with them. Its source is the Fourth Connecticut Lake in northern New Hampshire. Since the river already had a name, they might have thought they needed to name the lakes to match.

Answer: Merrimack River

The Merrimack River, which starts at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee Rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, powered the textile mills of Concord, Manchester and Nashua, New Hampshire and Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill, Massachusetts. The huge mills in these cities produced the cloth and yarns to clothe much of America in the nineteenth century.

Answer: The Battenkill

The Battenkill is a 50 mile (80 km) gentle river running from East Dorset, Vermont to near Greenwich, New York, where it joins the Hudson River. The fish are natives and known to be fussy. Although it is highly fished nowadays, there are still some wary old browns and brookies in there, so bring your best rod and a good variety of dry flies.

Answer: Charles River

"...Down by the banks of the River Charles..." You probably know the song. When the song came out in 1966, the Charles River was so polluted as to be an embarrassment to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Much has been done since to clean it up. It flows from Hopkinton, Massachusetts through the boundary of Boston and Cambridge into the Atlantic Ocean.

Originally called the Massachusetts River, King Charles I of England renamed the river after himself. As for the song "Dirty Water," the group that recorded it, The Standells - they're from California.

Answer: Pemigewasset

The Pemigewasset River (called "The Pemi" by locals) is 65 miles (104.6 km) long and flows from Franconia, through the White Mountains to downtown Franklin, where it joins with the Winnepesaukee River to form the Merrimack. There are some small hydroelectric dams along the river but it is mostly thought of for sport: boating and kayaking.

In the spring and late summer it's a great river to go tubing on. Just ask most any student at Plymouth (N.H.) State University!

Answer: Housatonic

The Housatonic River rises in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts and travels 149 miles (240 km) to Long Island Sound. It is a popular white water paddling river and moves very quickly. As for the ship, the U.S.S. Housatonic was a Union Navy sloop-of-war, launched in 1861.

In 1864, the Confederate States of America submarine, CSS H.L. Hunley, rammed an explosive charge into the Housatonic's hull. The charge soon exploded, sinking the Housatonic in five minutes with the loss of five lives.

Answer: Penobscot River

Tom Clancy's book "The Hunt for Red October" was about a Soviet submarine whose captain decided to defect to America. To hide it from Russian spy satellites, they put it in the Penobscot River Bay. In real life, the Penobscot has given its power to wood pulp and paper mills, hydropower, textile mills and shoe factories. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean near Bucksport, Maine.

Answer: Otter Creek

Otter Creek is one of the largest rivers in Vermont. Despite its length, the distance from its source in Peru, Vt. to its mouth in Lake Champlain at Ferrisburgh is 68 miles (109 km), the other 44 miles (71 km) are the result of the river's meandering. Because of earth compression during the Ice Age, it flows south to north. Various mills have operated along its length (some still do) and the city of Vergennes was home to military shipyards during the eighteenth century.

Answer: Mystic River

The Mystic River flows near Boston for just six miles (ten km) but it has a long record in folklore. At one time there were ten shipyards along its length. Native Americans and later Colonists used weirs to catch alewives to use for fertilizing their crops. Apparently, they weren't much good to eat.

The movie? No, it wasn't "Mystic Pizza" (that's in Connecticut); it was "Mystic River", starring Sean Penn and directed by Clint Eastwood.

Answer: Androscoggin River

The Androscoggin River is 178 miles (287 km) long and flows from Errol, New Hampshire to the Gulf of Maine in the Atlantic Ocean. It has been home to numerous textile and paper mills. By the 1970s, the level of mercury contamination was so high that the Androscoggin became the 'poster child', as it were, for water pollution; the publicity resulted in the U.S. Clean Water Act of 1977.

Its upper reaches are popular for trout and landlocked salmon fishing.