Rhône River

Physiography

The Rhône originates in the Swiss Alps, upstream from Lake Geneva. It comes into being at an elevation of about 6,000 feet (1,830 metres), emerging from the Rhône Glacier, which descends the south flank of the Dammastock, a nearly 12,000-foot (3,700-metre) peak. The river then traverses the Gletsch Basin, from which it escapes through a gorge, and flows along the floor of the Goms Valley at an elevation between 4,000 and 4,600 feet (1,200 and 1,400 metres). It next enters another gorge before reaching the plain of the Valais, which extends between the towns of Brig and Martigny, and descends in elevation 2,300 to 1,600 feet (700 to 500 metres). In crossing this high and rugged mountain area, the river makes successive use of two structural troughs: the first runs between two ancient crystalline rock massifs—the Aare and the Gotthard—and farther downstream the second runs between the arched rock mass of the Bernese Alps and, on the south, the massive rock face of the Pennine Alps. From Brig onward the landscape changes. During the last Ice Age a large glacier, fed by several small ones, plowed down the valley floor of the Valais and, except for some harder rock obstacles found near the town of Sion, succeeded in widening and deepening the narrow valley floor. As it did so, it held back both the upper Rhône and those of its tributaries that come down from the Pennine Alps. When the ice sheets retreated, both the tributaries—the Vispa, Navigenze, Borgne, and Drance—and the Rhône cut new deep gorges to connect their lower courses to the new valley floor. These gorges have created considerable difficulty for modern transportation, necessitating a series of hairpin-bend road links.

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After Martigny, where the valley floor is wider, the youthful Rhône thrusts northward at a right angle, cutting across the Alps through a transverse valley. At first, near the town of Saint-Maurice, this is no more than a small gorge, but it soon becomes wider and flatter. There, too, the river route has been assisted by structural factors, specifically by a dip in the crystalline rock massifs running from Mont Blanc to the Aare and by the discontinuity between the limestone masses of the Dents du Midi and of the Dent de Morcles. Across the mountain barrier the muddy waters of the Rhône enter another wide plain surrounded by high mountains and then plunge into the clearer, stiller waters of Lake Geneva, forming an enlarging delta.

The second sector of the Rhône’s course commences with Lake Geneva, large (224 square miles [580 square km]) and deep (1,000 feet [300 metres]) and lying between Switzerland and France in a basin hollowed out of the less-resistant terrain by the former Rhône Glacier. Upon leaving Lake Geneva, which has turned the course of the river to the southwest and decanted the sediment from its waters, the Rhône very quickly regains in full the milky colour so characteristic of Alpine rivers. Just below the city of Geneva, it receives its powerful tributary the Arve, which rushes down from the glaciers of Mont Blanc.

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From its juncture with the Arve to the French city of Lyon, the Rhône has to cross a difficult obstacle, the undulating series of ridges forming the Jura Mountains. It does this by cutting through deep longitudinal valleys called vaux and transverse valleys called cluses, which were formed when the Jura Mountains were uplifted during the Alpine orogeny. As a result, the river follows a complicated zigzag course. At the town of Bellegarde the river is joined from the north by the Valserine and, swinging south, plunges into a deep gorge now submerged in the 14-mile- (22-km-) long Génissiat Reservoir. In the wider sections of its course in this region, the Rhône runs through glacier-excavated basins that its own deposits have barely filled, causing intermittent marshy areas. It is also joined by the Ain, from the north, and, on the left bank, by the Fier and Guiers. The river next widens, the terrain becoming less hilly, and at Le Parc (some 95 miles [150 km] above Lyon) becomes officially navigable, although the average depth is no more than three feet.

At Lyon the Rhône enters its third sector, heading south toward the Mediterranean, its course characterized by the great north–south Alpine furrow that is also drained by its principal tributary, the Saône. The latter lies in the basins that the Ice Age glaciers hollowed out between the Jura Mountains to the east and, farther west, the eastern edge of the Paris Basin and the uplands of the Massif Central. It forms an important commercial link to the industrialized regions of northern France. From the city of Lyon onward the river occupies the trough lying between the Massif Central and the Alps, a channel up which the sea of the Paleogene and Neogene periods (about 66 to 2.6 million years ago) ascended covering the present Rhône valley in France. (It is common to distinguish between two Rhône valleys: one in Switzerland and the other in France. The French Rhône valley is divided into the upper Rhône valley, stretching from the Swiss border to Lyon, and the lower Rhône valley, from Lyon to the Mediterranean.) A body of water, Lake Bresse, spread over the Saône basin. Into this lake drained a river—the present Rhine—which then flowed south through the valley and into the Saône basin. Later tectonic movements caused the Rhine to reverse its flow, and the Doubs, a tributary of the Saône, now partly follows the former Rhine drainage pattern. About 5 million years ago the gulf of the sea was uplifted to expose the Rhône valley (in modern France), and Lake Bresse drained out to the south through the Saône River.

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Though the Rhône–Saône corridor is underlain by sediments laid down during the Paleogene and Neogene periods, much of its present surface is formed by debris deposited by valley glaciers that extended from the Alps during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago). These sediments were instrumental in cutting deep channels through the edge of the crystalline Massif Central, as evidenced at Vienne and Tain. The lower Rhone valley consequently takes the form of a series of gorges and basins, the latter often having a series of terraces corresponding to variations in the levels of ice and of river. Although the tributaries—notably the Ardèche—rushing down into the Rhône from the Massif Central are formidable when in flood, the great Alpine rivers—the Isère and the Durance, joining the left bank—are the most important in their effect on riverbed deposits and on the volume of water. Below Mondragon the lower Rhône valley becomes wider, and what was once a marshy landscape open to flooding has been regulated by a series of dams and canals.

The river’s delta begins near Arles and extends about 25 miles (40 km) to the sea. Twin channels of the river, the Grand and Petit Rhône, enclose the Camargue region. This region, formed by alluvium, is continuously extending into the Mediterranean. The finer materials are carried by onshore currents to form the barrier beaches of the coast and the sandbars closing off the Étang de Berre. One part of the delta has been set aside for a nature reserve, thereby protecting the feeding and nesting grounds of flamingos, egrets, ibis, and other rare species. Since 1962 the left bank of Fos has been transformed into a vast industrial complex consisting of port facilities, refineries, oil-storage tanks, and steel mills.