The Tennessee River

Flowing 652 miles through the seven states of Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, the Tennessee River derives its name from the Cherokee town of Tanasi. An important river “highway” for travel, commerce, and exploration, the area was settled as early as 8000 years ago and explored by Spanish expeditions in 1540. The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names, as the Cherokee people had their homelands along its banks, especially in what are now east Tennessee and northern Alabama. In addition, its tributary, the Little Tennessee River, flows into it from western North Carolina and northeastern Georgia, where it also was bordered by numerous Cherokee towns.

History

One of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, Shiloh, was fought on the west bank of the Tennessee River at Pittsburg Landing, in April 1862. The river was also known for treacherous travel and for devastating flooding in communities located on its shores. As part of FDR’s New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority began damming the river to improve navigation and to control flooding, while also bringing electrification and jobs to the Valley. In 1936, the Unified Development of the Tennessee River System plan laid out the tactics by which TVA would build dams to transform the poverty-stricken, often-flooded Valley into a modern, electrified and developed slice of America. It also provided TVA with an identity and a vision that drives the company today. TVA has partnered with the states and local governments and, in the process, helped to transform a region. An entire river system has been controlled and put to work. A stairway of nine dams and reservoirs provide a continuous nine-foot navigation channel permitting the movement of millions of tons of commercial freight traffic annually.

The Tennessee River has historically been a major highway for riverboats through the South, and today they are frequently used along the river. Major ports include Guntersville, Chattanooga, Decatur, Yellow Creek, and Muscle Shoals. This river has contributed greatly to the economic and industrial development of the Tennessee Valley as a whole. The economies of cities such as Decatur and Chattanooga would not be as dynamic as they are today, were it not for the Tennessee River. Many companies still rely on the river as a means of transportation for their materials. In Chattanooga, for example, steel is exported on boats, as it is much more efficient than moving it on land. In addition, locks along the Tennessee River waterway provide passage between reservoirs for more than 13,000 recreational craft each year. The river not only has many economic functions, such as the boat building industry and transportation, but it also provides water and natural resources to those who live near the river. Many of the major ports on the river are connected to a settlement that was started because of its proximity to the river. The Tennessee River is one of the most ecologically important river systems in the country. Birding is a popular activity due to migration and nesting of many species of birds that are found here including eagles, cranes, and herons. The river is home to more than 200 species of fish, including several endangered or threatened species. There are 100 plus species of freshwater mussels living in the watershed, along with endangered plants, birds, bats and salamanders. The Conservation Fund considers the Tennessee River Basin to be the single most biologically diverse river system for aquatic organisms in the United States.

Cities Along the River

Chattanooga, Tennessee, about 120 miles from both Huntsville and Knoxville, in opposite directions, is nicknamed “The Scenic City” for its beautiful views of the Tennessee Valley from atop the many mountaintops that surround the city. Chattanooga and its suburbs form the second most populous metropolitan area in the valley. The Battle of Chattanooga was fought on nearby Lookout Mountain. Chattanooga is also well known for the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, its transformation from a declining early industrial city to a thriving modern city, the famous Delta Queen, and the first publicly available one gigabit per second Internet access from a municipally-owned utilities company, i.e. the Electric Power Board (EPB), in the United States. Decatur, Alabama, known as “The River City”, dominated the economic landscape of north Alabama until the late 1950s, when the space race catapulted its neighbor Huntsville into that position. For most of the 20th century up to that point, Decatur held the top position in terms of economic impact and population. Its mixture of river transport and rail access has made it a busy hub of business, commerce, and manufacturing (chemicals and textiles especially) flowing down the river on the barges and boats of numerous companies and docking at the Port of Decatur. Decatur also claims the nickname “The Heart of the Valley” because of its location near the exact center of the length of the

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Tennessee River. Also because most north/south shipping traffic is funneled through the town utilizing three river crossings that are main routes for rail and road traffic between Birmingham and Nashville. The city is also an important river port that uses intermodal facilities to switch shipping methods between trains, trucks, and barges. Elizabethton, Tennessee, is a small city formerly known by the moniker “The City of Power” prior to the post World War II era of nuclear power production. It is located at the confluence of the Doe River and Watauga River downstream from the Watauga Reservoir and the Wilbur Reservoir. Both are maintained by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Florence, Alabama, considered part of the Shoals with Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia, is located immediately across the Tennessee River from Muscle Shoals. Florence is the birthplace of W.C. Handy and is where the only Frank Lloyd Wright designed house in Alabama is located, the Rosenbaum House. Guntersville, Alabama, is a major city of northeast Alabama and has a major lake and river port, Lake Guntersville and the Port of Guntersville, respectively. The city is famous for being the place where Ricky Nelson played his last concert before dying in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1986 . Huntsville, Alabama, nicknamed “the Rocket City”, has risen to be the center of north Alabama economic activity since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s. It is now the largest city in Alabama. Its aerospace and military technology centers of Redstone Arsenal, Cummings Research Park, and NASA’s Marshall

Space Flight Center define the high-tech landscape for Alabama. Knoxville, Tennessee, the most populous metropolitan area in the Valley, is where the Tennessee River begins at the confluence of the Holston and the French Broad Rivers. Knoxville along with nearby Oak Ridge and MaryvilleAlcoa, form a major research and manufacturing corridor anchored by the University of Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Tennessee Valley Authority headquarters (since 1980). Muscle Shoals, Alabama, considered part of the Shoals along with Florence, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia, is a major city of northwest Alabama, along U.S. Route 72 and Alabama 157. The city is located immediately across the Tennessee River from Florence. Muscle Shoals is famous for its 1960s Muscle Shoals Sound, produced at such studios as FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where many famous musicians and bands, such as Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones, also have recorded and produced numerous songs. Tuscumbia is the birthplace of Helen Keller. The original Congressional Act creating the government owned Tennessee Valley Authority, May, 1933, designated the government reservation at Wilson Dam as the location for the headquarters of the TVA. In 1980, a court order reassigned the headquarters to Knoxville. Scottsboro, Alabama, about 63 miles from Chattanooga and nicknamed “the Friendly City”, is located on Highway 72, 40 miles east of Huntsville. It was founded in the mid-1850s and is most famous for the Scottsboro Boys and the Unclaimed Baggage Center, as well as “First Monday,” an open-air marketplace held in and around downtown on Mondays following the first weekend of the month. Paducah, Kentucky. Founded in 1827 by William Clark of Lewis & Clark fame, Paducah’s significant American heritage can be traced to the city’s strategic location at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers.