The Coosa River is a tributary of the Alabama River in the U.S. states of

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = " Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...

and Georgia. The river is about long.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
, accessed April 27, 2011 The Coosa River begins at the

confluence In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main stem); o ...

of the Oostanaula and Etowah rivers in Rome, Georgia, and ends just northeast of the Alabama state capital, Montgomery, where it joins the

Tallapoosa River The Tallapoosa River runs U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 27, 2011 from the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains in Georgia, United States, southward and wes ...

to form the Alabama River just south of Wetumpka. Around 90% of the Coosa River's length is located in Alabama. Coosa County, Alabama, is located on the Coosa River. The Coosa is one of

's most developed rivers. Most of the river has been impounded, with Alabama Power, a unit of the

Southern Company Southern Company is an American gas and electric utility holding company based in the southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is the second larg ...

, owning seven dams and powerhouses on the Coosa River. The dams produce hydroelectric power, but they are costly to some species

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

to the Coosa River.

History

Native Americans had been living on the Coosa Valley for millennia before Hernando de Soto and his men became the first Europeans to visit it in 1540. The

Coosa chiefdom The Coosa chiefdom was a powerful Native American paramount chiefdom in what are now Gordon and Murray counties in Georgia, in the United States.Muscogee Creek The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy ( in the Muscogee language), are a group of related indigenous (Native American) peoples of the Southeastern WoodlandsMobile. The French had traveled from there upriver and believed that the Coosa River was a key gateway to the entire South; they wanted to control the valley. The main transportation of the day was by boat. The confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers formed the Alabama River, which has its mouth at Mobile Bay, the port used by the French for travel around the Caribbean and to France. They wanted to retain control of both the Coosa and the Alabama rivers. In the early 18th century, almost all European and Indian trade in the southeast ceased during the tribal uprisings brought on by the

Yamasee War The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee and a number of other allied Native American peoples, incl ...

against the Carolinas. After a few years, the Indian trade system was resumed under somewhat reformed policies. The conflict between the French and English over the Coosa Valley, and much of the southeast in general, continued. It was not until after Britain had defeated France in the

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (1754 ...

(also known as the

French and Indian War The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the st ...

) that France relinquished its holdings east of the Mississippi River to Britain. This was part of the Treaty of Paris, signed by both nations in 1763 to mark the end of the war. By the end of the American Revolutionary War, the Coosa Valley was occupied in its lower portion by the Creek and in the upper portion by the

Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, th ...

peoples, who had a settlement near its origin in northwest Georgia. They were beginning to feel pressure from European-American encroachment throughout their territories. After the Fort Mims massacre near Mobile, General

Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...

led American troops, along with Cherokee allies, against the Lower Creek in the Creek War. This culminated in the Creek defeat at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Afterward, the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814 forced the Creek to cede a large amount of land to the United States, but left them a reserve between the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers in northern Alabama. Even there the Creeks were encroached on by European-American settlers who began as squatters from the United States. Finally, during the 1820s and 1830s the Creek, Cherokee, and virtually all the southeastern Indians were removed to

Indian Territory The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign ...

(present-day

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...

). The Cherokee removal is remembered as the Trail of Tears. The Cherokee capital city of New Echota was located on the headwater tributaries of the Coosa River, in Georgia, until the tribe's removal. The Creek and Choctaw removals were similar to the Cherokee Trail of Tears. After the removals, the Coosa River valley and the southeast in general was wide open for American settlers. The invention of the

cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); a ...

at the turn of the 19th century had made short-staple cotton profitable to process. It could be easily grown in the upland areas of the South, and demand was high for this cotton in the US and Europe. Large-scale migrations known as "Alabama Fever" filled Alabama with new settlers developing large cotton plantations worked by enslaved African Americans. The first river town to form in the Coosa Basin was at the foot of the last waterfall on the Coosa River, the "Devil's Staircase." Settlers soon adopted the native name '' Wetumpka'' (meaning "rumbling waters" or "falling stream") for this new community. The Coosa River was an important transportation route into the early 20th century as a commercial waterway for riverboats along the upper section of the river for 200 miles south of Rome. However, shoals and waterfalls, such the Devil's Staircase along the river's lowest 65 miles, blocked the upper Coosa's riverboats from access to the Alabama River and the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

. Through its building of dams on the Coosa in the early 20th century- Lay, Mitchell and Jordan — Alabama Power began to pioneer new methods of controlling and eliminating

malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. ...

, which was a major health issue in rural Alabama in the early 1900s and other river valley areas. So successful were their pioneering efforts, that the Medical Division of the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference th ...

visited Alabama to study the new methods during the construction of Mitchell Dam. For a time, the ''Popeye the Sailorman'' cartoons were inspired by Tom Sims, a Coosa River resident of Rome, Georgia. He was familiar with riverboat life and characters of the early 1900s.

Impoundments and sections

The following table describes the seven impoundments on the Coosa River from the south to north built by the Alabama Power Company as well as the tailwater section below Jordan Dam. Harvey H. Jackson III in a book ''Putting Loafing Streams To Work'' characterized the importance of the first Coosa River dams as follows:

Flora and fauna biodiversity highlights

In the Middle Coosa River Watershed, 281 occurrences of rare plant and animal species and natural communities have been documented, including 73 occurrences of 23 species that are federal or state protected. Ten conservation targets were chosen: the riverine system, matrix forest communities (oak hickory-pine forest), gray bat ('' Myotis grisescens''), riparian vegetation, mountain longleaf pine ('' Pinus palustris'') forest communities, red-cockaded woodpecker (''Picoides borealis''), critically imperiled aquatic species (fish, mussels, and snails), southern hognose snake ('' Heterodon simus''), caddisflies, and imperiled plants. Maintaining the biodiversity of the Coosa River system is particularly important because it has already lost a significant portion of its aquatic fauna to extinction.

Tributaries

Confluence of Oostanaula and Etowah River, Rome GA March 2018

The Coosa River's drainage has hundreds of tributaries, which have been divided into sections based on the different areas of the

watershed Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to: Hydrology * Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins * Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...

. The first four sections are tributary systems that converge to form the main artery of the Coosa River in Georgia. These main tributary rivers are the Conasauga and Coosawattee Rivers, which together then form the

Oostanaula River The Oostanaula River (pronounced "oo-stuh-NA-luh") is a principal tributary of the Coosa River, about long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 27, 2011 formed by the c ...

. The Oostanaula then joins with the Etowah River in Rome, Georgia, forming the Coosa River. Other significant tributaries of the Coosa are: *Amicalola Creek *Armuchee Creek *Big Wills Creek *Cartecay River *Cedar Creek *Chattooga River *Chocolocco Creek *Coahulla River *Ellijay River *Hatchett Creek *Heath Creek *Little River *Mill Creek *Mountain Creek *Raccoon Creek *Rock Creek *Spring Creek *Sugar Creek *Terrapin Creek *

Waxahatchee Creek Waxahatchee Creek is a tributary of the lower Coosa River near Shelby, Alabama. It forms the southeastern border between Shelby County and Chilton County, where it is crossed by Alabama State Route 145. The lower reaches of Waxahatchee Creek are ...

*Weogufka Creek (through Hatchett Creek)

Major cities

A number of significant cities lie on the banks of the Coosa River. They include: * Gadsden, Alabama - between Weiss and H. Neely Henry lakes * Rainbow City, Alabama - on the Coosa due south of Gadsden *

Childersburg, Alabama Childersburg is a city in Talladega County in the U.S. state of Alabama. It was incorporated in 1889. At the 2020 census, the population was 4,754. It has a history dating back before 1540, when it was noted as a village of the Coosa Nation vi ...

- near Lay Lake * Rome, Georgia - headwaters *

Southside, Alabama Southside is a city located in Etowah County in the U.S. state of Alabama. It is included in the Gadsden Metropolitan Statistical Area. It incorporated in 1957. The population was 8,412 at the time of the 2010 United States Census. Located sou ...

- on the Coosa due south of Rainbow City * Wetumpka, Alabama - near confluence with Tallapoosa River forming the Alabama River

Advocates

The Coosa-Alabama River Improvement Association, founded in 1890 in Gadsden, Alabama to promote navigation on the Coosa River is a leading advocate of the economic, recreational and environmental benefits of the Coosa River system. The Alabama Rivers Alliance works to unite the citizens of Alabama to protect peoples right to clean, healthy, waters. Alabama Water Watch is dedicated to volunteer citizen monitoring of water quality in Alabama Rivers. The Alabama Power Foundation is a non-profit foundation providing grants for watershed, environmental and community projects along the Coosa River and within the state of Alabama The Coosa River Basin Initiative is a grassroots environmental organization with the mission of informing and empowering citizens so that they may become involved in the process of creating a clean, healthy and economically viable Coosa River Basin. Coosa Riverkeeper is a citizen-based river conservation group that patrols the river, educates the public and advocates on behalf of the river. The staffed organization is based on Yellowleaf Creek and works in the Middle and Lower Coosa Basins.Coosa Riverkeeper website
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References

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Notes

{{authority control Rivers of Alabama Rivers of Georgia (U.S. state) Rivers of Elmore County, Alabama Rivers of Talladega County, Alabama Rivers of Shelby County, Alabama Rivers of Etowah County, Alabama Rivers of Floyd County, Georgia ACT River Basin