Mary River is a

waterway A waterway is any Navigability, navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other ways. A first distinction is ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

. Situated on the northwestern portion of

Seward Peninsula The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska whose westernmost point is Cape Prince of Wales. The peninsula projects about into the Bering Sea between Norton Sound, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi ...

, it was included in the Agiapuk River mining district. The Mary River has a length of about and flows into the upper end of Imuruk Basin. About from its mouth, the river forks, the two branches being of about equal size. The lower part of the course of the Mary River is within the flats which border Imuruk Basin. Above these flats, the valleys of the two branches of the Mary River are wide, and within them, the rivers meander over broad flood plains. Between the forks of the river there is a broad, flat-topped ridge, with an elevation of , which is partly covered with washed gravel. At the edge of the Imuruk lowlands, where the Mary River enters them, there are gravel bluffs and isolated gravel buttes. These bluffs and buttes are remnants of a higher gravel plain. On the ridge between the forks of the Mary River, there are two low, rocky buttes, which, on account of the general low relief of the region, stand out as landmarks. These buttes are composed of white crystalline limestone, whose bedding is obscured by jointing and cleavage. Except for these buttes, the bed rock, as indicated by fragments found on the surface, consists of calcareous mica schists. The Kuzitrin slates form a broad belt of dark schistose quartzites between the Mary River and the Kuzitrin at Mary's Igloo. About the heads of the two branches of the Mary River, the bed rock consists of calcareous and graphitic schists similar to those on Igloo and Budd creeks, tributaries of the

American River The American River is a List of rivers of California, river in California that runs from the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada mountain range to its confluence with the Sacramento River in downtown Sacramento. Via the Sacramento River, it ...

. Little bed rock is exposed on the Mary River. Gold is not known to have been found on this river.

References

{{authority control Rivers of Alaska Rivers of Nome Census Area, Alaska Rivers of Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska Rivers of Unorganized Borough, Alaska Rivers of the Seward Peninsula