The Cumberland River rises in the Cumber land Mountains in Harlan County, southeastern Kentucky, near the Virginia line, and flows thence in a devious great U-shaped course down into Tennessee, curving thence up again into Kentucky, entering into the Ohio near Smith land, Ky., 688 miles from its source. After leaving its mountain sources it flows westerly through the highlands-of southeastern Kentucky. Where it cuts its way from the highlands it forms the beautiful Cumberland Falls with a drop. of 66 feet. A few miles below these falls it passes over Smith Shoals through a wild gorge, with side walls about 300 feet in height.
The scenery along the Cumberland from Car thage, Tenn„ to its head is amongst the finest in America. Two hundred and twenty miles of this section, i.e., from Carthage to Burnside, Ky., has good steamboat passenger service for six months of winter and spring. On this navigable stretch may be seen the old Indian town site and the old burial caverns at the mouth of Caney Fork, rugged Sand Shoals, Seven Sisters (a stretch of seven towering cliffs in Clay County, Tenn.), the Natural Bridge near Burksville, Ky., the historic battlefield of Fishing Creek, where the Confederate General, Zollicoffer, lost his life. It is a quaint river. Nearly every one of its beautiful scenic reaches has its legendary story. This portion of the navigable river above Carthage reaches that in teresting mountain and highland section, the home of the moonshiners. It is like stepping back into the language, thought and customs of the 18th century.
The Cumberland is navigable from Burnside, Pulaski County, Ky., to its mouth, a distance of 518 miles, for about six months in the year, for boats of three feet draft, and nine months for gasoline boats drawing one foot. From Lock 21 to Burnside, Ky., a distance of about 20 miles, it is navigable the year round. In 1908 the Federal government completed a series of seven locks and dams which rendered the river navigable for'the entire year from Nash ville, Tenn., to Carthage, Tenn., a distance of 120 miles, and since 1914 has locked and dammed the entire stretch from Nashville to the mouth of the river, a distance of 193 miles. The traffic on Cumberland River for year 1914 was 467; 486 tons, value, $9,023,206. This consisted prin cipally of corn, wheat, livestock, general mer chandise, lumber, logs, sand and gravel.
The Mississippi River supplies approximately to the State 200 miles of navigation. The Holston, French Broad, Clinch, Elk and Duck rivers, all tributaries of the Tennessee, are floatable in high tide for logs and flatboats for many miles, though rarely navigable for steamboats. Obey's River and Caney Fork, tributaries of the Cumberland, and the (Aim, Forked Deer, the Hatchie. tributaries of the Mississippi River, are navigable for 20 miles or more at high tides. Tennessee has approxi mately 1,200 miles of navigable waters. See also Water Power Resources of Tennessee in this article.
Contrary to the poptilar opinion, all the rocks of Tennessee that show at the surface are of sedimentary origin excepting some in three small areas near the North Caro lina line, in the northeastern part of the State, which are of igneous origin. Being of sedi mentary origin, they are in layers or beds, and consist of sandstones, conglomerates or pudding stones, limestones, shales, slates, sand and clay. In the Smoky Mountains and the valley of East Tennessee, these beds by the slow but enormous pressure that has been brought to hear upon them from the southeast have had their original horizontal position replaced by great folds that extend in a northeast-southwest direction. Though this pressure was slow, at times and inplaces it was exerted so fast that the rock beds could not adjust themselves to it by bend ing, hut instead snapped along lines parallel with the folds, thus permitting those beds on the southeast side, little by little, to be shoved up on those of the opposite side. Thus layers that originally were hundreds or in places even thousands of feet apart vertically now rests with their broken edges in contact with each other. Such displacements are known as faults, and there are many of them in the Great Valley of East Tennessee scores of miles long. Indeed some of them run the whole length of the valley, and into the other States at either end. It is this folding and faulting that gives direc tion to the Great Smoky Mountains themselves, to the valley of East Tennessee and the ridges and minor valleys within it. and to the eastern escarpment of Cumberland Plateau.