The Fishing River is a 39.0-mile-long (62.8 km) tributary of the Missouri River in western Missouri in the United States. It rises in the northeastern extremity of Kansas City in Clay County and flows generally eastward and southeastward through Clay and southeastern Ray counties, past the town of Mosby. It joins the Missouri River about 3 miles (5 km) south of the town of Orrick.
Downstream of Mosby, it collects the East Fork Fishing River, which rises at the town of Lawson and flows 20.6 miles (33.2 km) generally southward through Ray and Clay counties, past the town of Excelsior Springs.
In 1808, William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition established Fort Osage along the Missouri near the mouth of the Fishing River. The fort became a center of trade among European settlers and Native Americans in the region.
Famous quotes containing the words fishing and/or river:
“It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But not luck
brought us here. By design
clear air and cold wind polish
the river lights, by design
we are to live now in a new place.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)