Cimarron River (Arkansas River)

Headwaters of the Cimarron River near Forgan, OK

Course of the river ( highlighted in red)

The Cimarron River is the name of a river in the southwestern United States.

It rises on the Raton Pass in New Mexico and flows over 1123 km before it joins in Tulsa, OK in the Arkansas River. Its name comes from the Spanish word for " mustang".

The Cimarron River flows west in the panhandle of Oklahoma, touched on only 15 km Colorado and reached Kansas, where he first Cimarron National Grassland, then crosses the Cimarron Desert. These sections of the river in the summer months dries out occasionally completely. To the east of Liberal, KS crosses the river several times the 37th parallel, which forms the border of Kansas and Oklahoma, before he turns to the southeast and Oklahoma. In Tulsa he opens into the reservoir Keystone Lake in the Arkansas River. Because of its low water levels in the Cimarron River is not navigable and is not dammed.

At the upper reaches approximately between the state border of New Mexico to Oklahoma to Ulysses, KS ran through the middle of the 19th century parallel to the river designated as Cimarron Cutoff variant of the Santa Fe Trail, one of the most important trade routes in the early days of the Wild West.