The Cheoah River is a tributary of the Little Tennessee River in

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia a ...

in the United States. It is located in Graham County in far western North Carolina, near Robbinsville, and is approximately 20 miles in length. Its headwaters are in the

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. The ...

where it flows northwest near Robbinsville, to the

Lake Santeetlah Lake Santeetlah, part of the Tennessee River watershed, was created in 1928 when Alcoa dammed the Cheoah River as a means of generating hydroelectric power in Graham County, North Carolina. The reservoir is largely surrounded by the Cheoah Distric ...

and flows towards the

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 ...

border with a terminus at the Little Tennessee between the Cheoah Dam and

Lake Calderwood A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

Variant names

According to the

Geographic Names Information System The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...

, it has also been known historically as: *Cheowa River *Cheowah River

References

* Tributaries of the Little Tennessee River Rivers of North Carolina Bodies of water of Graham County, North Carolina {{NorthCarolina-river-stub