Lowell of the South - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 4

upon itself to form serpentine “oxbows” throughout the remainder of the river's journey to
Savannah, Georgia (elev. 42 ft.), and the Atlantic Ocean.
Intense geological energy and force created the southern landscape and the Savannah
River watershed more than 200 million years ago, when what are now the North American
and African continental plates repeatedly collided with each other before separating for the
last time. These faulting and thrusting collisions—whereby the plates slid under or over
each other—created uplift in the earth's crust and resulted in the formation of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, which some geologists think may have been as tall as the Rocky Moun-
tains. Over the following millions of years, erosion—rain, snow, ice, and wind—slowly
whittled the Blue Ridge, contributing to creation of valleys that drained through the rolling
hills of the southern Piedmont and the more moderate Coastal Plain gradients to the At-
lantic Ocean, or drained through the ridge and valley to the Gulf of Mexico. 8 The tectonic
forces were important for creating deep valleys and narrow gorges—important landforms
that can constrict stream flow—but these actions alone could not form lakes as found else-
where in North America.
Glacial movement in conjunction with tectonic forces carved the landscapes necessary
for natural lakes in other parts of North America, but these combined forces did not sculpt
a southern landscape to create natural lakes. During the great Ice Age of the Pleistocene
epoch (20,000 to 9,000 years ago), a giant ice sheet stretched from coast to coast but never
advanced from the polar north beyond present-day Ohio. Nearly three miles thick, it sliced
valleys and pushed soil to build low ridges. As the giant ice sheet began to recede and melt
16,000 years ago, it left behind midwestern and New England waterscapes pocked with
natural lakes from Minnesota to Maine and flooded the Mississippi River valley with melt-
water. Like tectonic forces, the glacial retreat did not scrape the southern landscape and
leave behind a waterscape of natural lakes. 9 Geological and climatic events were not the
only conditions that influenced the form and composition of the southern landscape. People
also shaped the Savannah River valley for thousands of years before any lakes or artificial
reservoirs appeared on the landscape.
William Bartram, the American South's best-known southern naturalist, provided the
most complete picture of the Savannah River valley, having traveled from the Atlantic
port of Savannah throughout the valley's Piedmont and Blue Ridge headwaters between
1773 and 1775. Endowed with a gifted botanical eye and an artful pen, Bartram observed
how planters organized the valley's land, water, and human energy resources. 10 African
slavery—initially outlawed in colonial Georgia before legalization in 1751—made it easier
for Euro-Americans to capitalize on the valley's natural resources and enabled Georgians
to directly compete with South Carolina in production of agricultural and export commod-
ities such as rice. 11