Everything about The Cumberland River totally explained
The
Cumberland River is an important waterway in the
Southern United States. It is 678 miles (1,106 km) long. It starts in
Letcher County in eastern
Kentucky on the
Cumberland Plateau, flows through southeastern Kentucky before crossing into northern
Tennessee, and then curves back up into western Kentucky before draining into the
Ohio River at
Smithland, Kentucky. The Cumberland is one of three major Kentucky rivers with headwaters in this county. The others are the
Kentucky River and the
Big Sandy River.
History
Important first as a passage for hunters and settlers, the Cumberland River also supported later riverboat trade which reached to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Villages, towns and cities were located at landing points along its banks. Through the middle of the 19th century, settlers depended on rivers for trading and travel.
In
1748,
Dr. Thomas Walker led a party of hunters across the
Appalachian Mountains from
Virginia. Walker, a Virginian, was an explorer and surveyor of renown. He gave the name "Cumberland" to the lofty range of mountains his party crossed, in honor of
Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland whose name had become popular in America after the
Battle of Culloden in
1746 (Stewart, 1967). Walker's party pursued their journey by way of the
Cumberland Gap into what is today Kentucky. Finding a beautiful mountain stream flowing across their course they called it the "Cumberland River."
Walker's journal entry for April 17, 1750, reads in part: "I went down the creek a-hunting, and found that it went into a river about a mile below our camp. This, which is Flat Creek and some other join'd, I called Cumberland River."
Previous to Walker's trip, the Cumberland River had been called
Warioto by
Native Americans and
Shauvanon by French traders. The river was also known as the
Shawnee River (or
Shawanoe River) for years after Walker's trip.
Several
American Civil War battles occurred near the Cumberland River, including the battle for
Fort Donelson. The river's name has been used to name the
Union Army of the Cumberland and several U.S. Navy ships have been called
USS Cumberland.
Geography
The Cumberland River is a wild river above the headwaters of Lake Cumberland.
Cumberland Falls, a 68-foot
waterfall on this section of river, is one of the largest waterfalls in the eastern United States, and the only place in the Western Hemisphere where a
moonbow can be seen. Most of the river below Lake Cumberland's
Wolf Creek Dam is navigable because of a number of
locks and
dams. A 90 mile section of its
Big South Fork is protected by the
National Park Service as
Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.
Dams at various locations of the Cumberland River have created large reservoirs for recreation such as
Lake Barkley in western Kentucky and
Lake Cumberland (the deepest lake in the Tennessee and Cumberland river valleys) in southern Kentucky. Cordell Hull and
Old Hickory Lake to the east of Nashville and Cheatham Lake to the west. Laurel Lake, on the Laurel River in southern Kentucky, the
Dale Hollow Reservoir on the Obey River in northeast middle Tennessee, and
Percy Priest Lake on the Stones River in
Nashville are each created by dams just upstream from their respective confluence with the Cumberland River.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Cumberland River'.
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