Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chattooga River (Study River Proposal), 1970, including designated wild, scenic, and recreational sections.
The Chattooga River's headwaters can be located in the upper right corner of the map (below Cashiers, N.C.),
and the river flows to the map's lower left corner (Tugaloo Lake) along the Georgia and South Carolina bor-
der. In Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture,
A Proposal: The Chattooga, “A Wild and
Scenic River”
(March 3, 1970). Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Ge-
orgia Libraries, Athens.
Private energy corporations and federal agencies built large dam projects in every car-
dinal direction and every southern Appalachian watershed neighboring the Chattooga's be-
fore 1970. The Chattooga River tumbles from the Eastern Continental Divide and the base
of Whitesides Mountain's 700-foot granite rock face near Cashiers, North Carolina. The
river's tributaries drain an 180,000-acre watershed ringed by mountains that reach nearly
5,000 feet above sea level and can receive over eighty inches of annual precipitation. (The
Pacific Northwest is the only other area in the lower forty-eight states that receives this
much precipitation.) The majority of the river forms about forty miles of the South Caro-
lina and Georgia border. The Chattooga flows between the two national forests, crashing
over boulders and ledges before the current slacks and fills the Georgia Power Company's
Lake Tugaloo—an uninspiring, flatwater reservoir behind a hydroelectric dam that fills the
