Holston River

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Holston River
The North Fork of the Holston River near Weber City, Virginia.
Origin	Bland County, Virginia.
Mouth	Tennessee River at Knoxville
Basin countries	USA

For other uses of "Holston", see Holston (disambiguation).

The Holston River is a major river system of southwestern Virginia and East Tennessee. The three major forks of the Holston (its North, Middle and South Forks) rise in southwestern Virginia and have their confluence near Kingsport, Tennessee. From there the river flows roughly southwestward, just north of Bays Mountain, until it reaches its confluence with the French Broad River just east of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. This confluence is considered to be the headwaters of the Tennessee River.

The Holston River valley is greatly developed for electrical power generation, both with hydroelectric dams and coal-fired steam plants. In its upper reaches some of these plants are controlled by private interests; in the downstream portion they are owned by the United States Government's Tennessee Valley Authority.

The river was named after Stephen Holston, who built a cabin on the upper reaches of the river in 1746. Holston Mountain was named after the Holston River.

Although today's Holston River ends at the French Broad River to form the Tennessee River at its mile post 652 in Knoxville, the Holston River did not originally end there. Until 1933, the Holston River flowed past Knoxville and continued to its confluence with the Little Tennessee River at Lenoir City 51 miles downstream. At that point, the Tennessee River began, 601 miles upstream from the Ohio River at Paducah, Kentucky.

The headwaters of the Tennessee have been changed many times during the 18th and 19th centuries, but according to Tennessee Valley Authority historians, the reason for the last particular change, was that when the Tennessee Valley Authority was created in 1933, Congress mandated that, since the TVA headquarters were to be in downtown Knoxville, and from the headquarters, the federal agency would manage all the dams and flood control on the Tennessee River and its tributaries, the TVA headquarters had to be on the banks of the Tennessee River. For that reason, the headwaters of the Tennessee River were moved from Lenoir City 51 miles upstream past downtown Knoxville, to the confluence of the Holston and the French Broad Rivers, to fulfill the Congressional mandate for creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority.