Hell Gate

Coordinates: 40°46′54″N 73°55′25″W / 40.781698°N 73.923516°W / 40.781698; -73.923516

Hell Gate is a narrow tidal strait in the East River in New York City in the US. It separates Astoria, Queens from Randall's and Wards Islands (formerly two separate islands, now joined by landfill).

Etymology

The name "Hell Gate" is a corruption of the Dutch phrase Hellegat, which could mean either "bright strait" or "clear opening", and it was originally applied to the entirety of the East River. Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, the first European known to have navigated the strait, described it in his journals during his 1614 voyage aboard the Onrust. Hellegat is a fairly common toponym for waterways in the Low Countries, with at least 20 separate examples. Because explorers found navigation hazardous in this New World place of rocks and converging tide-driven currents (from the Long Island Sound, Harlem River strait, Upper Bay of New York Harbor, and lesser channels, some of which have been filled), the Anglicization stuck.

Hells Gate

Hells Gate or Hell's Gate may refer to:

Places

Africa

Antarctica

Asia

Caribbean

Europe

North America

Hell Gate, Montana

Hell Gate (sometimes known as Hell Gate Ronde, Hell's Gate or Hellgate) is a ghost town at the western end of the Missoula Valley in Missoula County, Montana, United States. The town was located on the banks of the Clark Fork River roughly five miles downstream from present-day Missoula near what is now Frenchtown.

Geography

Hell Gate lay at the west end of the Missoula Valley. About 13,000 BCE, the advance of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet created an ice dam on the Clark Fork which created Glacial Lake Missoula. After the Missoula Floods and the final draining of Glacial Lake Missoula about 11,000 BCE, the lake sediment dried and became the fertile Missoula Valley.

The Hell Gate Valley is framed by the Rattlesnake Mountains to the north and northeast and the Bitterroot Mountains to the southeast, south, and west. Since the early 1900s, the area has been surrounded by the Lolo National Forest. The eastern mouth of the valley is defined by a narrow pass between Mount Jumbo and Mount Sentinel, which leads to Hellgate Canyon. The western mouth is less well-defined and narrow, and leads to Ninemile Divide.