Go Green The Chattahoochee: Our 185 million-year-old riverr

When the mountain range that fed the original Colorado was destroyed by faulting about 25 million years ago, the river reversed its course. New plateaus rose and the sediment-laden river “played the part of a stationary band saw”, cutting through two million year old rock to create abysses like the Grand Canyon.

Closer to home, the Brevard Fault Zone, a prominent geologic feature of the southeastern U.S., extends for nearly a thousand miles across the southern Appalachians. Its parallel ridges are responsible for the Chattahoochee River’s northeast-to-southwest course through north Georgia and its long, linear character.