Watauga River
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Watauga River rises in Watauga County, North Carolina, a mountainous area in western North Carolina along the Tennessee state line. Crossing into Johnson County, Tennessee the Watauga River is impounded by the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watauga Dam, creating Watauga Lake. This impoundment receives two important tributaries, the Elk River and Roan Creek, whose former valley of bottom land forms a very large embayment of Watauga Lake. The lake is bridged by State Route 67 just as the watercourse enters Carter County. The Appalachian Trail crosses the Watauga River at Watauga Dam. The Watauga Dam product diverts much of the river flow here into a tunnel. The water flows out through turbines at the end of this tunnel, generating hydroelectric power.
Just below Watauga Dam is Wilbur Dam, which forms a small but very deep lake. Now operated by the TVA, the Wilbur Dam site on the Horseshoe section of the Watauga RIver actually predates (circa 1911) that federal quasi-agency and was a project of the former Tennessee Electric Power Company, a privately-owned utility bought out by TVA in the late 1930s. Elizabethton, Tennessee acquired the moniker "City of Power" with the due to local access to hydro-generated electricity.
The Watauga River flows generally north and then west into the Carter County seat of Elizabethton, where it receives the flow of the Doe River. Below Elizabethton is the Sycamore Shoals State Historic Site, where the "Overmountain Men" assembled to march off to the Battle of Kings Mountain during the American Revolutionary War. On the line between Carter County and Washington County is Watauga Steam Plant, another development of the Tennessee Valley Authority. A considerable portion of the line between Washington County and Sullivan County, Tennessee is formed by the Watauga River. At the end of this portion of the river is another TVA development, Boone Dam, which is actually located on the South Holston River just below its confluence with the Watauga, causing much of the downstream portion of the Watauga to be slackwater.
The word "Watauga" comes from the Cherokee, who had several towns so named, including one at present-day Elizabethton, which became known as "Watauga Old Fields". A larger Cherokee town called Watauga was located on the Little Tennessee River near Franklin, North Carolina. The Cherokee word is more accurately written Watagi. Other common spellings include Watoda, Wattoogee, and Whatoga [Mooney, James. "Myths of the Cherokee". (1900, reprint Dover: New York, 1995)]. A North Carolina State University web page (The Watauga Medal) cites that the word "Watauga" is a Native-American word meaning "the land beyond"[1], however local reference to the name origin is attributed to the meaning "beautiful river" or "beautiful water".
The original settlers of Nashville, Tennessee set out from the Watauga River area (in present day Carter County, Tennessee), called the Watauga Country, during the American Revolution when they realized that the British Proclamation of 1763 forbidding settlement of its colonists west of the Blue Ridge Mountains was essentially now unenforceable. As a result, there are many references to "Watauga" in the Nashville area, even though it is approximately 250 miles (400 km) west of this area, including an apartment building, a small lake in Centennial Park, and the like. (There was even a secret organization of businessmen in the 1960s and 1970s which essentially ran the city of Nashville called "Watauga".)
