Loire River

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Loire
The Loire in Orléans.
The Loire in Orléans.
Origin Massif Central
Mouth Atlantic Ocean
Basin countries France
Length 1,012 km (629 miles)
Source elevation 1,408 m (4607 feet)
Avg. discharge 850 m³/s
Basin area 117,000 km²

The Loire River (pronounced /lwaʁ/ in French), the longest river in France with a length of just over 1000 km, drains an area of 117,000 km², more than a fifth of France. The central part of the Loire Valley was added on the World Heritage Sites list by the UNESCO On December 2, 2000.

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The name "Loire" comes from Latin Liger, which is itself a transcription of the native Gaulish (Celtic) name of the river. The Gaulish name of the river comes from the Gaulish word liga, which means "silt, sediment, deposit, alluvium", and which gave French lie, which in turn gave English lees. Liga comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *legh-, meaning "to lie, lay", which gave many words in English, such as to lie, to lay, ledge, law, etc.

In French the adjective derived from the river is ligérien, as in le climat ligérien ("the climate of the Loire Valley"), a climate considered the most pleasant of northern France, with warmer winters and, more generally, fewer extremes in temperatures than in more continental climates.

Originating in the north-eastern part of the southern Cévennes highlands, the Loire flows roughly northward through Roanne and Nevers to Orléans and thereafter westward through Tours to the Atlantic at Nantes. Changes in the river's water levels have sometimes resulted in serious flooding, notably in 1856, 1866 and 1911.

Unlike most other rivers in western Europe, there are very few dams or locks creating obstacles to its natural flow (the Villerest dam, built in 1985 a few kilometers south of Roanne, has played a key-role in preventing recent flooding). As a result, the Loire is a very popular river for boating excursions, flowing through a pastoral countryside, past limestone cliffs and storybook castles.

For over 2,000 years, the Loire was one of the great highways of France, but the coming of the railway in the 19th century caused a collapse in the navigation. Today the river is only regarded as navigable as far as Bouchemaine, where the Maine joins it near Angers.

The Phoenicians and Greeks had used packhorses to transport goods from Lyon to the Loire to get to the Atlantic coast. The Romans used the Loire as far as Roanne, only around 150km from the source, whilst the Vikings used longships to attack Tours.

River traffic increased until the 19th century, with a toll system being used in medieval times. For centuries attempts were made to keep a navigable channel open by the use of wooden embankments and dredging. During the 17th century, Jean-Baptiste Colbert instituted stone training walls and quays from Roanne to Nantes which helped make the river more reliable, but navigation was frequently stopped by flood and drought. In 1707 floods were said to have drowned 50,000 people, with the water rising more than 3m in 2 hours in Orléans. A typical passenger timetable from Orléans to Nantes took 8 days, with the journey against the stream taking 14.

Steam-driven passenger boats appeared soon after the beginning of the 19th century plying the river between Nantes and Orléans and by 1843, 70,000 passengers were being carried annually in the lower river. However with the introduction of the railway in the 1840s trade on the river steadily declined and proposals to build a fully navigable river up to Briare came to nothing. The opening of the Canal latéral à la Loire in 1838 enabled navigation between Digoin and Briare to continue, but the river level crossing at Briare remained a problem until the construction of the Briare aqueduct in 1896.

The Canal de Roanne à Digoin was also opened in 1838 and was nearly closed in 1971 but still provides navigation further up the Loire valley to Digoin. However the 261km Canal de Berry, a narrow canal with locks only 2.7m wide, which was opened in 1820s and connected the Canal latéral à la Loire at Marseilles-lès-Aubigny to the Cher River at Noyers and back into the Loire near Tours, was closed in 1955.

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The Loire River as it flows through Blois.
The Loire River as it flows through Blois.

Several départements of France were named after the Loire. The Loire flows through the following départements and towns:

Last updated 2007

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