Hiwassee River

About

Hiwassee River, North Carolina Tennessee — 1940 Hiwassee Dam, 1838-1839 Cherokee Removal, TVA, Apalachia. Long before dams and rating scales, the Hiwassee was Cherokee country. The name derives from the Cherokee 'Ayuhwasi,' meaning 'savanna' or 'meadow,' and the great Cherokee town of Hiwassee Town stood near the river's confluence with the Valley River. That deep tenancy ended in violence: the Cherokee Removal of 1838-1839, remembered as the Trail of Tears, forced thousands of Cherokee from this valley, with many crossing the Hiwassee watershed along routes the National Park Service now documents as part of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.

A generation later the river again channeled the movement of people under duress. During the Civil War, both Union and Confederate forces made the town of Charleston a stop in their operations between 1861 and 1865, turning the Hiwassee into a pivotal crossing. The nineteenth century closed with a different kind of scar just south of the watershed: from the 1890s into the 1930s, copper smelting near Ducktown, Tennessee deforested over 50,000 acres through sulfur dioxide emissions, one of the worst industrial environmental disasters in American history. Reclamation efforts beginning in the 1970s have dramatically reversed the damage.

The twentieth century reshaped the river's course through engineering. The Tennessee Valley Authority built the 1940 Hiwassee Dam, creating the 6,090-acre Hiwassee Lake, followed by the Chatuge Dam in 1942 and the Apalachia Dam in 1943, which added a third TVA impoundment to the drainage. Below Hiwassee Dam the river became a tailwater trout fishery, and the corridor now carries the designation of a Blue-Ribbon Trout Stream. The drainage runs across Towns and Union counties in Georgia, Cherokee, Clay, and Graham counties in North Carolina, and Polk, Bradley, and McMinn counties in Tennessee.

Recognition of the river's quieter value followed. On April 4, 1968, Tennessee designated the stretch from the North Carolina state line down to Delano a Class III Developed River Area. That same corridor threads through Cherokee National Forest, where the John Muir National Recreation Trail follows the Hiwassee for 20 miles, honoring Muir's 1867 thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico.

Today the Hiwassee is defined for paddlers by water the Tennessee Valley Authority controls. Apalachia Dam releases create some of the most predictable Class II-III paddling in the Southeast; it is one of the few rivers in the region where a boater can call the TVA hotline, confirm a release schedule, and plan a trip days in advance. The five-mile Apalachia Dam release section is the most popular run. Below it, the reach from Reliance to Towee Creek offers a Class I-II family float, and the lower Hiwassee runs wide and calm at Class I. Outfitters including Hiwassee Outfitters in Reliance and the Nantahala Outdoor Center run rentals, shuttles, and guided trips along a river where Cherokee memory, wartime history, and managed water converge in steady current.