Levisa Fork River

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Levisa Fork River
The Levisa Fork north of Pikeville. U.S. Route 23 is in the background.
Origin	Buchanan County, Virginia
Mouth	Confluence with Tug Fork at Louisa, Kentucky
Basin countries	USA
Length	140 mi (225 km) ^[1]
Mouth elevation	545ft (166 m) ^[1]

Map of the watershed of the Big Sandy River, showing its main tributaries, Tug Fork to the east and Levisa Fork to the west.

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 140 mi (225 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^[1]. 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.