TANANA RIVER

river, east central Alaska, U.S., an important tributary of the Yukon River. Arising from two headstreams, the Chisana and Nabesna rivers, and fed from glaciers high in the Wrangell Mountains of southeastern Alaska, the river flows 550 mi (885 km) from the head of the Chisana northwestward along the base of the Alaska Range to join the Yukon River near the village of Tanana. The Tanana was named from the Athabascan Indian term for river trail, and it was first explored by Russian traders in the mid-19th century. Its valley, an important gold-producing area made famous in 1904 by the gold rush, is also a lumbering district and one of Alaska's major farming regions, producing potatoes, truck crops, and small grains. Fairbanks, the terminus of the Alaska and Richardson highways (which follow the river west of the Yukon Territory, Canada) and of the Alaska Railroad (from the port of Seward), is the commercial and distributing centre of the Tanana Valley.