Tennessee River ( #AtoZChallenge )

      Tributaries are the streams and rivers that feed into larger rivers.  Many of the rivers that I've mentioned in my Rivers of America series are tributaries that feed into other larger rivers that are also tributaries of other larger rivers.  It's an example of the motto of the United States "E pluribus unum" or "out of many, one"...

Tennessee River

Toms River
By John F. Peto - Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Colección Permanente, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17349280

     

         Not too far from my old home in Maryville TN runs the Tellico River which  starts in the mountains of North Carolina then runs into Tennessee where it dumps into the Little Tennessee River which in turn is a tributary of the massive Tennessee River.  All these rivers have TVA dams for flood control and power generation.  It makes for a network of lakes used for all sorts of recreational activities.  

          Back around 1972 I borrowed my mother's station wagon so my friend Vernon Clouse and I could drive down toward where the Tennessee River heads toward Chattanooga. I'd seen on the map where there was a ferry crossing--near Dayton perhaps--and since at that time I'd been trying to find every ferry crossing within a 100 mile radius of where I lived we decided to take that adventure.  We found that ferry and rode across what seemed to be a very wide river with a rather swift current at one point.  It was a small boat that only carried 2 or 3 vehicles.  I'm sure it no longer runs, but if it does I'm not sure that I'd want to cross it again.  

         In the fall of 1974 I set out walking westward from Maryville and the first night I camped under the Hwy 411 bridge spanning the Little Tennessee River near where it is joined by the Tellico River.  This was before the new bridge had to be built when they dammed the river to form Tellico Lake.  I walked onward after the first night encampment, but that's a bigger story to be told elsewhere at another time. 

          If I were to tell a river story in a song then the Tippecanoe River of Indiana might be a nice choice.  It's a musical sounding name with a lot of rhyming possibilities.  After all, Bobbie Gentry found river name magic in her "Ode to Billy Joe" in which she sings about seeing a couple throwing something off a bridge spanning the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi.  Even the Trinity River off Texas offers a lot of potential--I think there's a good country song in that name.

                       This summer I'm hoping that I'll be able to visit my three daughters who live in or near Toms River  in New Jersey.  This city sits along the Toms River.  What a surprise! One of my sons-in-law who grew up in Toms River (the town, not in the river) is named Tom.  Never asked who he was named after.  He did grow up in Toms River so I guess it could be so.  And I named his wife (my daughter) after a street in Knoxville.

              Have you ever traced tributaries to the final destination of one leading to the other?  Have you ever tipped over in a canoe?   Do you know anyone who was named after a place?

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