Savage River (Maryland) from Allegany Bridge

The Savage River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
accessed August 15, 2011

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

in Garrett County, Maryland, and is the first major

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...

of the

North Branch Potomac River The North Branch Potomac River flows from Fairfax Stone in West Virginia to its confluence with the South Branch Potomac River near Green Spring, West Virginia, where it turns into the Potomac River proper. Course From the Fairfax Stone, the ...

from its source. The river was named for 18th century surveyor John Savage. Tributaries to the Savage River upstream of the Savage River Reservoir include Carey Run, Mudlick Run, Little Savage River, Bluelick Run, Blacklick Run, Warnick Run, Poplar Lick Run, and Bear Pen Run. At the southern end of the reservoir, the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

maintains the

Savage River Dam Savage may refer to: Places Antarctica * Savage Glacier, Ellsworth Land * Savage Nunatak, Marie Byrd Land * Savage Ridge, Victoria Land United States * Savage, Maryland, an unincorporated community * Savage, Minnesota, a city * Savage, M ...

for

flood control Flood control methods are used to reduce or prevent the detrimental effects of flood waters."Flood Control", MSN Encarta, 2008 (see below: Further reading). Flood relief methods are used to reduce the effects of flood waters or high water level ...

and recreation. It has trout fishing for

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model used ...

rainbow A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows c ...

brook A brook is a small river or natural stream of fresh water. It may also refer to: Computing *Brook, a programming language for GPU programming based on C *Brook+, an explicit data-parallel C compiler *BrookGPU, a framework for GPGPU programming ...

and sometimes cutthroat trout. Pine Swamp Run, Dry Run, Middle Fork Crabtree Creek, and Crabtree Creek flow into the reservoir. Aaron Run joins the Savage River just upstream of its merger with the North Branch Potomac River. The last of the river, from the Savage River Dam to its confluence with the Potomac at

Bloomington, Maryland Bloomington is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) locates in southeastern Garrett County, Maryland located at the confluence of the North Branch Potomac River and Savage River. It lies to the west of Luke on Maryland Ro ...

, is a destination for

whitewater Whitewater forms in a rapid context, in particular, when a river's gradient changes enough to generate so much turbulence that air is trapped within the water. This forms an unstable current that froths, making the water appear opaque and ...

paddling and slalom racing, on the infrequent occasion when sufficient water is released from the dam. There were three one-day recreational releases in 2011, two in June and one in September. The Savage has been used for the

U.S. Olympic Trials The United States Olympic Trials are competitions held in certain sports to select the United States' participants in those sports at the Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading i ...

and was the site of the 1989 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships on June 24–25. The usual put-in for whitewater boats is below the dam, where the highway crosses the river. The slalom racing section begins further downstream, below the Piedmont Dam, and ends downstream at the viewing stand above the pedestrian suspension bridge. The 1989 race was the first time the Slalom World Championships were held in the United States. The next occasion was a quarter century later in 2014, when they were held on artificial whitewater at the nearby Adventure Sports Center International, constructed in 2007 as a more accessible alternative to the seldom-watered Savage.Sports Center Wins Bid to Host 2014 World Champs
Retrieved 2011-05-11 The average gradient for the Savage River's whitewater section is 75 feet/mile (1.4%), with sections at 100 feet/mile (1.9%), giving the rapids a whitewater class III to III + at the typical recreational release of . The rapids are fast and continuous, with very few eddies or calm spots.

References

Rivers of Maryland Rivers of Garrett County, Maryland Tributaries of the Potomac River {{Maryland-river-stub