About
Jackson River, Virginia — 1964 Gathright Dam Lake Moomaw 2,530 ac, 1750 William Jackson Land Grant, 257-ft Earthen. The Jackson River drains 646 square miles of Bath, Highland, and Alleghany Counties before flowing 96 miles east and south to meet the Cowpasture River and form the James. As a tributary of the James, it sits within the larger James River watershed. The tailwater reach falls into three parts: Gathright Dam to Smith Bridge, a 5-mile upper trophy stretch; Smith Bridge to Covington, 10 miles of mixed wild and stocked water; and the lower Jackson, 5 miles of larger water. Classified for its riffles, the river runs coldest and clearest where the dam meters its flow.
Long before that engineering, the Jackson valley was a contested borderland in the Allegheny Highlands, shared as seasonal hunting territory by the Shawnee, Cherokee, and Catawba peoples. Hot Springs had drawn people to its thermal mineral water well before European contact. The colonial period reached the valley in 1750, when William Jackson received a land grant that would eventually lend the river its name.
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought industry. The watershed was logged from the 1830s through the 1920s to feed the regional timber trade and railroad expansion, worked by local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations. The exhaustion of the old-growth stands around 1910, the start of state forestry conservation in 1915, and the establishment of state forests in the 1930s ended large-scale cutting. Meanwhile, the first hydrological studies took shape: USGS surveys in the 1870s through 1890s, gauging stations established between the 1880s and 1910s, and state geological streamflow assessments in the 1910s through 1930s laid the groundwork for measuring the river.
The river's defining chapter is the dam itself. Named for Benjamin C. Moomaw Jr. (1889–1978), remembered as the "Father of the Gathright Dam," the Lake Moomaw project sits 43 miles above the Jackson-James confluence and 17 miles upstream of Covington. Completed in 1964, it transformed a warm-water river into one of the most productive trout fisheries in Virginia. Water-quality work followed the same arc as the rest of the country: state water pollution control studies in the 1950s through 1970s, Clean Water Act assessments from 1972 to 2000, and the modern TMDL programs that address more than a century of logging, agricultural, and industrial impacts. The 1990s brought the Jackson River Restoration Project.
Today the Jackson endures as both a working fishery and a living, contested landscape. Below the dam, cold releases sustain wild rainbow and brown trout, and the state manages the tailwater as stocked trout water. Above Lake Moomaw, the river runs warmer and fishes well for smallmouth bass, rock bass, rainbow, and brown trout. But the tailwater demands a careful etiquette: anglers must heed the no-fishing signs upstream of Johnson Springs and respect the historic King's Grant property rights that still govern stretches of the banks — rights that court cases in the 2000s and 2010s worked to clarify. The river supports the Covington, Hot Springs, and Warm Springs economies, a coveted fly-fishing destination whose reputation has followed its cold, metered flow.
River conditions are community-verified. CFS ranges, difficulty ratings, and access points may not reflect every flow level or seasonal change. Always check current conditions, scout unfamiliar rapids, and paddle within your skill level.