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Report of the Secretary of Agriculture in relation to the forests, rivers, and mountains of the southern Appalachian region

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  • 138 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. beneath the surface at varying but generally steep angles. The southern half of the region has along its western border an irregular belt of bedded slates, limestones, quartzites, and conglomerates. These rocks, which make up the great bulk of the surface, have a general northeasterly strike and a steep but varying dip; while near the eastern border there is another, but narrow and more irregular, belt of rock of somewhat similar character, which follows approximately the general position of the Blue Ridge, and dips steeply southeastward. As stated above, the important streams rising in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia have their origin on the slopes of the Blue Ridge. Those rising on the eastern slope, such as the James, Roanoke, Yadkin, Catawba, Broad, Savannah, and Chattahoochee, flow generally toward the southeast, their head streams plunging down the mountain slopes many hundreds of feet in short distances and soon reaching the gentle slope of the Piedmont Plain. (See Pis. XXVU and LXX.) The streams rising on the western slopes of the Blue Ridge—the Watauga, Nolichucky, French Broad, Pigeon, Little Tennessee, Tuckasegee, and Hiwassee rivers—flow in the general characteristic northwesterly direction across the upturned ridges of the gneiss and more recent bedded rocks, with frequent falls, into the great valley of East Tennessee. (See PI. LXXI.) The Holston River, which flows along this vallejr from its upper end to its junction with the Tennessee system, forms an exception to the general direction of flow in this region, for its course lies toward the southwest; and the Coosa River, of Alabama, which has its headwaters on the southeastern slopes of the Blue Ridge, takes a similar direction. The New River, also, which rises in the cross ranges connecting the Unakas and the Blue Ridge, flows toward the northwest into the Ohio. The elevation of the country is so great and the descent of the stream is so rapid that the general course of the principal rivers has been hut little modified by the geologic structure of the region, though they lie directly across the strike of the rocks. The resulting conditions produce occasional falls and cascades in the streams (see PI. LXXVII); but the larger part of the courses of these streams consists of a succession of rapids (see PI. LXXIII), furnishing ample opportunities for water-power development by the building of dams at intervals across the deep, narrow gorges. A number of the smaller tributary streams in North Carolina and in
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).