page_title: Palouse River
section_title: Course
hierarchical_section_title: Palouse River / Course
context_page_description: The Palouse River is a tributary of the Snake River in Washington and Idaho, in the northwest United States. It flows for 167 miles southwestwards, primarily through the Palouse region of southeastern Washington. It is part of the Columbia River Basin, as the Snake River is a tributary of the Columbia River.
  Its canyon was carved out by a fork in the catastrophic Missoula Floods of the previous ice age, which spilled over the northern Columbia Plateau and flowed into the Snake River, eroding the river's present course in a few thousand years.
context_section_description: The Palouse River flows from northern Idaho into southeast Washington through the Palouse region, named for the river.
  The river originates in Idaho in northeastern Latah County, in the Hoodoo Mountains in the St. Joe National Forest. It flows westward, near State Highway 6, as it nears the state line.  In Washington, the river flows in Whitman County to Palouse and then to Colfax, where it meets its South Fork, which originates on the south slopes of Moscow Mountain of the Palouse Range, flows south of Moscow and west to Pullman. (Paradise Creek parallels the South Fork, running through Moscow to Pullman, accompanied by the Bill Chipman Palouse Trail and State Route 270.)
  From Colfax, the river meanders west and ends up in the lower Snake River southwest of Hooper, but not before dropping over Palouse Falls.  The Palouse River enters the Snake River below the Little Goose Dam and above the Lower Monumental Dam.
caption: Palouse River entering the Snake at Lyon's Ferry near Starbuck, looking north in 2006
exif: {}