II.

Course of the Rhine

The Rhine begins as a tumultuous Alpine stream churning through deep gorges, and because it is fed by the meltwaters of snow and glaciers, it usually reaches its maximum volume in spring and summer. Although the river's flow is moderated somewhat as it passes through Lake Constance (Bodensee), the river remains a torrent westwards to Basel. Near Schaffhausen it is about 185 m (600 ft) wide and plunges 23 m (75 ft) over a spectacular waterfall, the Rheinfall.

At Basel the river turns north and enters the Rhine Graben, a flat-floored rift valley lying between the Vosges on the west and the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) on the east. Strasbourg, France, a focal point for merging water routes from the Paris Basin, is located at the valley's northern extremity.

With the junction of the Main River at Mainz, in Germany, the Rhine's seasonal regime becomes more stabilized. Along its course from Bingen to Bonn, the river has cut the deep, steepsided Rhine Gorge through the Rhineland Plateau. This picturesque gorge, with terraced vineyards and castle-lined cliffs, has often been called the “heroic Rhine”, renowned in history and romantic literature. Near the town of St Goar is the Lorelei, the great face of rock that inspired the famous lyric Die Lorelei by the German poet Heinrich Heine. Here the Rhine is about 146 m (480 ft) wide and 23 m (75 ft) deep. A 65-km (40-mi) stretch of the Rhine Valley in this area was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.

Downstream from Bonn, the river crosses the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, which has a population of about 17 million and accounts for one-third of the country's industrial production. Leading cities on this stretch of the river are Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Duisburg. Along the Ruhr River, a small east-bank tributary of the Rhine, is one of the world's greatest concentrations of industrial activity.

At the Netherlands frontier, the Rhine is about 655 m (2,150 ft) wide. From this point it divides into two parallel distributaries, the Lek and the Waal, as it crosses a wide, marshy plain and a great delta before entering the North Sea. These two main channels were closed off by the Delta Project, completed in 1986, which built sluices and alternate channels for the river’s runoff. The main link from the Rhine to the North Sea is the New Waterway, which established Rotterdam as the leading port in continental Europe when it was constructed in 1872.

Much of this area is at or below sea level, but dyking contributed to its becoming one of the most densely populated and important economic regions in Europe. However, the river is becoming increasingly prone to flooding, and in January 1995 some 250,000 people had to be evacuated in the Netherlands when it threatened to overwhelm dykes downstream from Nijmegen. Rotterdam, still the leading port of continental Europe, is located near the river's mouth and handles mainly trans-shipments from ocean and river craft.