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Chattahoochee
River The Chattahoochee River
rises high in the
Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia and flows
southwesterly toward the Alabama state line. From there
the river tumbles for twenty miles over the
fall line—the region of transition between the
foothills of the
Piedmont and the lower and flatter
Coastal Plain. Below the fall line in
Columbus, the river slows to ramble south toward
Florida, where it is known as the Apalachicola.
Early History
Archaeological evidence indicates that
humans have lived along the banks of the Chattahoochee
River for a very long time.
Dating to 1000 B.C., the
Kolomoki complex near present-day
Blakely is one of the best-known sites of these
ancient civilizations. During the
Mississippian Period (A.D. 800-1600), at least
sixteen significant settlements dotted the
Chattahoochee's banks south of the fall line. As these
civilizations died because of exposure to European
diseases, native survivors from other areas moved into
the river valley below present-day
Atlanta. They arrived separately and at different
times but eventually established sufficient political,
linguistic, and cultural bonds to be referred to as one
people—the
Creeks. (The
Cherokees lived near the headwaters of the river.)
The Creeks may have acquired their English name from
their habit of settling near the larger tributaries of
rivers like the Chattahoochee. The Creeks respected the
river as a food source, a transportation artery, and an
esteemed element of the spirit world. The Creeks named
the river; Indian agent
Benjamin Hawkins recorded in 1799 that chat-to
meant "stone," and ho-che meant "marked" or
"flowered."
By treaty, the Creeks gradually ceded
their lands to white settlers south of
Fort Gaines in 1814 and east of the Chattahoochee by
1825. In 1827 the Florida legislature established the
port town of Apalachicola and built wharves to receive
upstream
cotton. In 1828 the
Georgia legislature created the town of Columbus at
the head of navigation.
River Traffic and
Trade
The first steamboat to run from the Gulf
of Mexico to Columbus was the Fanny, which
completed the journey of several months in January 1828.
Other boats quickly followed, and
Columbus became a thriving cotton-marketing center with
unimpeded river travel to the south and intermittent
river travel possible northward all the way to
present-day
Gwinnett County in metropolitan Atlanta.
Most of the year, however, the twenty
miles of
waterfalls along the fall line between Columbus and
Franklin acted as a barrier separating the two navigable
ends of the Chattahoochee. Above the falls, Colonel
Reuben Thornton ran barges and flatboats from West Point
to Standing Peachtree, about sixty miles upstream and
seven miles from present-day Atlanta's Five Points area.
Others ran flatboats between Franklin and West Point as
early as 1838. The various settlements in the
present-day Atlanta area grew up around taverns at
ferries that allowed travelers to cross the river and
continue on into Tennessee by land. Northeast of
present-day Atlanta the Chattahoochee River resembled a
swift creek and powered a number of sawmills and
gristmills.
Civil War and
Postwar Development
By the late 1830s the towns located at
the fall line along the Chattahoochee also used the
river as an industrial power source for
textile mills and gristmills. By the time the Civil
War began in 1861, Columbus was known as "the Lowell of
the South," after the home of industrial revolution,
Lowell, Massachusetts. Its mills were vitally important
to the Confederacy, and defense of the river was
crucial, because it represented the easiest route to the
fall line mills from the Gulf of Mexico, especially
after Union naval forces took possession of Apalachicola
in April 1862.
The Confederate government created the
Chattahoochee-Flint-Apalachicola military district,
commanded by General
Howell Cobb, in November 1862. Cobb directed the
obstruction of the river, which was effective in keeping
out the enemy by water. However, Union land forces did
invade the river valley in 1864, when General William T.
Sherman's army crossed over the Chattahoochee just north
of Atlanta and sacked the city before moving on toward
Savannah in the
March to the Sea. As the war was ending in April
1865, General James H. Wilson's forces crossed the
Chattahoochee River to destroy the factories and mills
of Columbus and West Point.
The golden age of steamboating on the
Chattahoochee dawned once the area recovered from the
war's destruction. Opulent new passenger boats replaced
the workhorse freighters of the antebellum period.
Innovations in service made river travel more reliable,
and technological breakthroughs made it safer. Freight
became more diversified, with lumber products,
fertilizer, and honey crowding the ubiquitous cotton
bales. During this period poet
Sidney Lanier composed "The Song of the
Chattahoochee" (1877), in which the river narrates its
journey through
Habersham and
Hall counties.
Instead of calling on every homestead or
business along the river, by 1900 steamboats stopped at
only twenty-eight major communities or railroad
junctions. Sixteen years later, the steamers made only
five stops as the river trade shifted to the lower river
(south of Eufaula, Alabama), where navigation was
unimpeded by seasonal low water and natural
obstructions.
Power, Dams, and
Controls
In the post–World War I era, rail lines
and improved roads proved to be the most direct and
dependable form of transportation.
The river was relied on less as a
transportation conduit than as a hydroelectric power
provider. Using the rushing water of the fall line,
citizens built the first large-scale hydroelectric dams
between 1899 and 1924 at North Highlands, Goat Rock, and
Bartlett's Ferry. After these early modern dams were in
place, the public began to see the need for other dams
for flood control. At West Point especially, residents
were so accustomed to high waters that the town raised
the wooden sidewalks five feet above street level.
In 1953 Congress authorized the
Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Project, which set out
to construct four dams for flood control, power
generation, and navigation. The Jim Woodruff Dam
(backing up the waters of the Chattahoochee and
Flint rivers to create Lake Seminole); the George W.
Andrews Lock and Dam at Columbia, Alabama; the Walter F.
George Lock and Dam near Eufaula, Alabama; and the
Buford Dam near
Gainesville were all completed by 1963. The
Georgia Power Company built a final hydroelectric
dam, known as Oliver Dam, near Columbus in 1959. After a
particularly devastating flood in 1961, Congress finally
authorized a dam for West Point in 1962, which was
completed in 1975.
Today the Chattahoochee River is valued
more as a source of drinking water and recreation than
as a transportation artery. The water it supplies
underpins the regional economies of today and tomorrow.
While Georgia, Alabama, and Florida squabble over the
unrestricted right to use the river, the Chattahoochee
continues to follow its ancient route to the sea. Though
it is used little as a highway today, it remains the
valley's most important ecological and economic asset.
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