The Emory River is a river draining a portion of

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

Cumberland Plateau The Cumberland Plateau is the southern part of the Appalachian Plateau in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. It includes much of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and portions of northern Alabama and northwest Georgia. The terms "Alle ...

. It flows for just over from its source near

Frozen Head State Park Frozen Head State Park and Natural Area is a state park in Morgan County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The park, situated in the Crab Orchard Mountains between the city of Wartburg and the community of Petros, contains some of ...

to its mouth along the

Clinch River The Clinch River is a river that flows southwest for more than through the Great Appalachian Valley in the U.S. states of Virginia and Tennessee, gathering various tributaries, including the Powell River, before joining the Tennessee River in Ki ...

Kingston, Tennessee Kingston is a city in and the county seat of Roane County, Tennessee, United States. This city is thirty-six miles southwest of Knoxville. It had a population of 5,934 at the 2010 United States census, and is included in the Harriman Micropolit ...

Hydrography

The Emory River rises on the slopes of Fork Mountain and descends through a valley along the northern base of Bird Mountain, a prominent ridge in

in Morgan County. The surrounding area has been the subject of extensive

strip mining Surface mining, including strip mining, open-pit mining and mountaintop removal mining, is a broad category of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit (the overburden) are removed, in contrast to underground mining, in which ...

for

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

which has resulted in some stream

pollution Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...

. The stream initially flows basically westward and is crossed by U.S. Highway 27. Turning more southwestward, it is paralleled for a time by a line of the

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31 ...

. It meets the

Obed River Obed River is a stream draining a part of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. It, and particularly its tributaries, are important streams for whitewater enthusiasts. The Obed River rises in Cumberland County, Tennessee, just south of Crossvi ...

in the southeast corner of the expansive Catoosa Wildlife Management Area, a large game-management area operated by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. Still paralleled by the railroad, the stream crosses into Roane County near Harriman. Backwaters of the

Watts Bar Lake Watts Bar Lake is a reservoir on the Tennessee River created by Watts Bar Dam as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority system. Geography Located in the U.S. state of Tennessee about midway between the cities of Chattanooga and Knoxville, the l ...

impoundment of the

Tennessee River The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names, ...

cause the water below Harriman to be somewhat slack. The

Little Emory River The Little Emory River rises in Morgan County, Tennessee near the town of Coalfield. It is one of the major tributaries to the Emory River. It crosses into Roane County, where it soon becomes an embayment of Watts Bar Lake several miles upstream ...

is also impounded somewhat above its mouth into the Emory below Harriman. The mouth of the Emory is into the

at the

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...

Kingston Power Plant Kingston Fossil Plant, commonly known as Kingston Steam Plant, is a 1.4-gigawatt (1,398 megawatt, MW) coal-fired power plant located in Roane County, Tennessee, Roane County, just outside Kingston, Tennessee on the shore of Watts Bar Lake. It is o ...

, a coal-fired electric generation station initially developed during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, largely to power the

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

enrichment plants used to make the world's first

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

at nearby

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research an ...

. The 2008

Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill The Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill was an environmental and industrial disaster that occurred on Monday December 22, 2008, when a dike ruptured at a coal ash pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in ...

heavily polluted the Emory River and surrounding area.

Etymology

According to a 1910 article in the ''Rockwood Times'' by Captain William E. McElwee, the river was named after "William Emery", an early traveler who drowned while swimming the river with his "accoutrements" on. Early deed books sometimes refer to this as "William Emeries River". The

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

name for the Emory River was "Babahatchie", which means "babbling waters."Roberts, Snyder E. (1981) ''Roots of Roane County, Tennessee - 1792 -''

References

External links

Emory River Watershed Association
{{authority control Rivers of Tennessee Rivers of Morgan County, Tennessee Rivers of Roane County, Tennessee Wild and Scenic Rivers of the United States

Hydrography

Etymology

See also

References

External links