Kamchatka is a land of rivers; more than 40,000 watercourses branch like capillaries into every nook of the peninsula’s extending arm. In this plethora of water the powerful “Kamchatka” is indisputably the peninsula’s predominant river.  It’s 758 km (451 mi) length is not particularly noteworthy by Russian standards – for comparison, the Amur River, Russia’s longest, is 4,440 km (2760 mi) in length – but on Kamchatka, where 95% of all rivers are less than 100 km (62 mi) long, it is a giant among sucklings.

Predominance among Kamchatka’s rivers is not, however, merely a matter of size. Expanding funnel like from a narrow valley near the village of Pushchino, the massive Kamchatka River drainage basin is the geographical and cultural heart of the peninsula.  Whereas all other Kamchatka rivers originate either in the Central Range or the Eastern Range, the Kamchatka River headwaters lie in both. In this way the river unites the two ranges that run the length of the peninsula and give Kamchatka its topographical distinctiveness.  Gaining strength from the snow melt out of both of these ranges and fed by 420 tributaries along its way, the Kamchatka River is more than a kilometer wide by the time it empties into the Pacific Ocean.

The millions of salmon that spawn yearly in the Kamchatka River once supported hundreds of native Itelmen settlements. In the beginning of the 18th century when Russians first began to explore Kamchatka’s interior they recorded 160 native settlements, each with a population of 150 to 200 people, between the mouth of the Kamchatka River and its confluence with the Yelovka River (near present day Klyuchi). This stretch of river is only 150 km (93 mi) long!  

Russians too found the Kamchatka River valley a convenient place to inhabit. Virtually all early Russian expeditions traveled along the river and the first two Russian settlements on Kamchatka – the Upper Kamchatka Fortress in 1698 (near present day Milkovo) and the Lower Kamchatka Fortress in 1700 (near present day Klyuchi) – were both founded on its banks.