Levisa Fork River

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The Levisa Fork River (also called simply the Levisa Fork or the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River) is a tributary of the Big Sandy River, approximately 164 mi (264 km) long, in southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky in the United States.

It rises in the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia, in eastern Buchanan County, near Grundy. It flows west into Pike County, Kentucky, where it receives the Russell Fork River and is impounded to form Fishtrap Lake reservoir, then northwest past Pikeville and Prestonsburg. At Paintsville it turns to the NNE, flowing through Johnson and Lawrence counties. It joins the Tug Fork from the southwest at Louisa on the West Virginia state line to form the Big Sandy.

The river is partly navigable for commercial purposes through a series of locks. In the early 1900s the river was navigable as far as Pikeville.

Variant names, according to the USGS, include Louisa River, Louisa Fork, Lavisa Fork, and West Fork, in addition to Levisa Fork River and Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River. The official name according to the USGS is Levisa Fork. The name was given by Dr. Thomas Walker as "Louisa", after Princess Louisa, the wife of Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (Walker had just named the Cumberland River a month or two earlier). According to George R. Stewart, frontiersmen "forgot" who it was named for and it changed over time to Levisa. According to Robert F. Collins of the United States Forest Service, Dr. Walker originally named the Kentucky River "Louisa", but in time the name shifted to the nearby river called Levisa today.

[edit] References

• USGS GNIS
• Stewart, George R. "Names on the Land". (1967)
• Collins, Robert F. "A History of the Daniel Boone National Forest". (1975)