St. Francis River (Mississippi tributary)

Water type: River
Continent: North America
Climate: Continental

Largest tributaries

Tyronza River

Artificial lakes

Lake Wappapello

The St. Francis River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, about 426 miles (686 km) long, in southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas in the United States.

The river drains a mostly rural area and forms part of the Missouri-Arkansas state line along the western side of the Missouri Bootheel.

The river rises in a region of granite mountains in Iron County, Missouri, and flows generally southwardly through the Ozarks and the St. Francois Mountains.

It passes through Lake Wappapello, which is formed by a dam constructed in 1941.

Below the dam the river meanders through cane forests and willow wetlands or forested swamp, transitioning from a clear stream into a slow and silt-laden muddy river as it enters the flat lands of the Mississippi embayment.

In its lower course the river parallels Crowleys Ridge and is part of a navigation and flood-control project that encompasses a network of diversion channels and ditches along it and the Castor and Little rivers. Below the mouth of the Little River in Poinsett County, Arkansas, the St. Francis is navigable by barge.

It joins the Mississippi River in Phillips County, Arkansas, about 7 miles (11 km) north of Helena.

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