The Susquehanna River is a river located in the northeastern United States. At 464 miles (747 km) long, it is the longest river on the American east coast that drains into the Atlantic Ocean, and with its watershed it is the 16th largest river in the United States, and the longest river in the continental United States without commercial boat traffic today—for what navigations had been used to improve the waterway for barge shipping of bulk goods by water transport of the Pennsylvania Canal in the Canal Era were let go under the domination of the more flexible and much faster shipping measures under the railroad industry.

The nation's sixteenth largest river by volume, the Susquehanna flows through New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland into the Chesapeake Bay. It forms from two main branches, with the "North Branch", which rises in upstate New York, regarded by federal mapmakers as the main branch, and the West Branch Susquehanna, both of which were improved by navigations in the 1820s—1830s as the Pennsylvania Canal which, using the offices of the Allegheny Portage Railroad actually allowed ladened barges to be hoisted across the mountain ridge into the Pittsburgh area. The 82 mile leg conceived to connect the Delaware to the Susquehanna became instead the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad built by the Pennsylvania Canal Commission. The shorter West Branch, which rises in western Pennsylvania, joins the main stem near Northumberland in central Pennsylvania.

The river drains 27,500 square miles (71,000 km2), including nearly half of the land area of Pennsylvania. The drainage basin (watershed) includes portions of the Allegheny Plateau region of the Appalachian Mountains, cutting through a succession of water gaps in a broad zigzag course to flow across the rural heartland of southeastern Pennsylvania and northeastern Maryland in the lateral near-parallel array of mountain ridges. The river empties into the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace, Maryland, providing half of the Bay's freshwater inflow. The Chesapeake Bay is in fact the ria of the Susquehanna.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susquehanna_River