The Emory River is a river draining a portion of

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...

's Cumberland Plateau. 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 at

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 Micropol ...

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 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 ...

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, th ...

. The stream initially flows basically westward and is crossed by

U.S. Highway 27 U.S. Route 27 (US 27) is a north–south United States Highway in the southern and midwestern United States. The southern terminus is at US 1 in Miami, Florida. The northern terminus is at Interstate 69 (I-69) in Fort Wayne, Indiana ...

. 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 Catoosa Wildlife Management Area is a large game-management area on the Upper Cumberland Plateau in Morgan, Cumberland and Fentress counties in Tennessee in the United States. It comprises 96,000 acres (332 km2) of wild land administered by ...

, 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 ...

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 name ...

cause the water below Harriman to be somewhat slack. The Little Emory River is also impounded somewhat above its mouth into the Emory below Harriman. The mouth of the Emory is into the Clinch River at the Tennessee Valley Authority's

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

, 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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, 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