The Oyapock or Oiapoque (; ; ) is a long river in

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that forms most of the border between the

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overseas department of

French Guiana French Guiana ( or ; french: link=no, Guyane ; gcr, label=French Guianese Creole, Lagwiyann ) is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic ...

and the

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian

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of Amapá.

Course

The Oyapock runs through the Guianan moist forests ecoregion. It rises in the Tumuk Humak () mountain range and flows into the

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, where its

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

forms a large

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

bordering on Cape Orange. The mouth of the Oyapock is the northern ''end'' of Brazil's coastline, as it is where the border between Brazil and French Guiana meets the ocean, but nearby Cape Orange, which separates the Bay of Oyapock from the Atlantic Ocean, is the northernmost ''point'' of the Brazilian coast. In Brazil, both the cape and the mouth of the Oyapock are often mistaken for the whole country's northernmost point (rather than just of its coastline), and in the past this information could even be found in geography schoolbooks. Yet the true northernmost point in Brazil is actually far inland, on Monte Caburaí, in the state of Roraima, hundreds of kilometers from the Oyapock and almost a full degree more to the north.

History

Vicente Yáñez Pinzón was said to be the first European person to see the Oiapoque River in the first years of the 16th century. It has been rendered Japoc, Yapoc, Iapoco, Wiapoco, and even called the Vicente Pinzón River. Early European colonists referred to the river as the ''Wiapoco'', and it was the site of early settlements by Briton

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in 1608 and Dutchman Jan van Ryen in 1627. The name Oiapoque has been officially used from 1900, when a territorial dispute between Brazil and

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was resolved through Swiss diplomatic arbitration.

Settlements

In addition to the small towns of Oiapoque (Amapá) and Saint-Georges de l'Oyapock (French Guiana), there are some small villages scattered along the bank of the Oyapock, such as Camopi and

Clevelândia do Norte Clevelândia do Norte is a district of the Brazilian city of Oiapoque, Amapá, by the Oyapock River. History In 1922 an agricultural outpost called the Núcleo Colonial Cleveland was transformed into a political and criminal concentration camp dur ...

Bridge

The Oyapock River Bridge has been built across the river to connect the Brazilian town of Oiapoque and the French town of Saint-Georges-de-l'Oyapock. It is the first international land border connection of French Guiana; although completed since 2011, as of February 2017, it had remained closed to traffic due to payment delays for construction and building crews, staffing issues within the Brazilian customs facilities, plus some minor disagreements between the Brazilian and French governments. The inauguration ceremony of the bridge finally took place on 18 March 2017. Starting from 08:00 on 20 March 2017, the bridge has been open to members of the public.

In popular culture

The widespread

Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...

expression ''"do Oiapoque ao Chuí"'' ("from the Oyapock to the Chuí ivers) is used to refer to the whole nation, by mentioning the waterways that mark respectively the northern and southern extremities of the Brazilian coastline (as noted above, they are often mistaken for the entire country's northern and southern extreme points). Thus, the saying is used in the same way as Americans use the expression "from coast to coast."

References