The Sequatchie River is a waterway that drains the Sequatchie Valley, a large valley in the

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 " Al ...

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. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

. It empties into the

Tennessee River The Tennessee River is a long river located in the Southern United States, southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. Flowing through the states of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, it begins at the confluence of Fren ...

downstream from

Chattanooga Chattanooga ( ) is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located along the Tennessee River and borders Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the south. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee ...

near the Tennessee-

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

state line.

Hydrography

The Sequatchie River originates from several springs at or near Devilstep Hollow Cave, including the spring, Head of the Sequatchie, which is protected as part of the Justin P. Wilson Cumberland Trail State Park. Dye traces establish the origin of their water as originating from Grassy Cove, the pastoral limestone sinkhole located to the north-east. The Sequatchie River follows the general trend of the Sequatchie Valley, flowing south-west for . Sequatchie-river-pikeville-tn1

The stream crosses into Bledsoe County near the head of the Sequatchie Valley. The Sequatchie Valley is traversed throughout much its length by

U.S. Route 127 U.S. Route 127 (US 127) is a north–south U.S. Highway in the eastern half of the United States. The southern terminus of the route is at U.S. Route 27, US 27 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The northern terminus is at Interstate 75 ...

. The first sizeable town on the Sequatchie is Pikeville, the county seat of Bledsoe. State Route 30, which descends Walden's Ridge into the Valley and then climbs the

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. Due to the similarity, the term '' scarp'' may mistakenly be incorrectly used inte ...

back onto the plateau, crosses here. Crossing into Sequatchie County, the stream flows into Dunlap. Just north of Dunlap, US 127 turns southeastward, beginning the ascent onto Walden Ridge and eventually down into

. A set of railroad tracks previously ran along the river from this point, testament to heavy underground

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 Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

extraction in years past. For almost the rest of its length the Sequatchie is paralleled by State Route 28. State Route 283 also runs along the base of the Walden's Ridge escarpment for several miles. The river then enters Marion County. The town of Whitwell is just a few miles into Marion County. Below Whitwell at the small community of Sequatchie (also known as Sequachee), the river receives the flow of the Little Sequatchie River, which descends from atop the Cumberland Plateau to the west. At

Jasper Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases, is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color; and rarely blue. The common red color is due to ...

, which is slightly west of the river, is a railroad junction. East of town is the crossing of U.S. Highway 41 by SR 28, and the bridge over the river. Shortly south of the Interstate 24 bridge is the mouth of the Sequatchie into the Guntersville Lake impoundment of the

References

External links

* {{authority control Rivers of Tennessee Tributaries of the Tennessee River Rivers of Bledsoe County, Tennessee Rivers of Cumberland County, Tennessee Rivers of Sequatchie County, Tennessee Rivers of Marion County, Tennessee

Hydrography

See also

References

External links