The Locust Fork River

The Locust Fork River was flowing before the Appalachian Mountains were uplifted about 300 million years ago.  As Africa and North America collided to create the Appalachians, the Locust Fork eroded the newly forming mountains as they were lifted, holding firm its familiar route to the sea.

The river and its tributaries have carved a path through the surrounding ridges of sandstone and chert at least a dozen times. Today it exhibits hairpin curves bordered by steep bluffs. These entrenched meanders bear witness to the river’s tenacity and provides geological evidence that this river is older than the hills through which it flows.

Together river and ridges have created an array of habitats for a distinctively rich diversity of life.  The Locust Fork River arises in the scenic folded ridges of Alabama’s Valley and Ridge Province in the Blount County area.  Here it begins its tumbling course between high sandstone bluffs and through boulder-strewn rapids.

This upper stretch of the Locust Fork is a favorite playground for whitewater canoeists and kayakers for its small waterfalls, rocky shelves, inviting sand bars, and world-class rapids.

Flowing on, beneath historic covered bridges, the river gathers life with waters added from the Blackburn Fork and Turkey Creek.  As it rambles southwestward past farmland and forest through the coal country of the Cumberland Plateau, it flows roughly the path of an ancestral stream that flowed here at the time the Appalachians were first being born some 300 million years ago. That ancestral stream watered the dinosaurs’ ancestors.

The Locust Fork is a venerable and ancient treasure, a river literally older than the hills.  This river deserves to remain free-flowing – along the path it has claimed through the eons.

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The Locust Fork offers:

• Class III and IV whitewater rapids

• Historic covered bridges

• Excellent fishing opportunities

• Easy access for swimming and picnicking

• Stunning natural scenery

• Diverse aquatic life, including 74 species of fish

• Abundant migratory and resident birds and wildlife

• Unique native flora

• Habitat for the endangered flattened musk turtle

• Mussels and snails, including several endangered species

• Potential habitat for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker

• Potential habitat for the Indiana Gray Bat