Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
. . .
Sidney Lanier (1842-1881),
"Song of the Chattahoochee"
Now as evidently then, Lanier's lovely stream finds plenty of folly to from which to flee. Vacation houses fill Habersham's hills; courtesy of the Corps of Engineers, Lake Lanier fills the valleys of Hall.
The Chattahoochee River follows the crushed, erodible rock of the Brevard Fault Zone southwest from its headwaters in northeast Georgia's mountains, across most of Georgia, turning south out of the Brevard Zone in west Georgia to define the Georgia-Alabama border. Crossing the Fall Line at Columbus, the Chattahoochee continues south to unite with the Flint River in Georgia's southwest corner to form the Apalachicola River, which flows south to the Gulf of Mexico. Apalachicola Bay's famous oysters bathe in the the bounty of the Chattahoochee's 500-mile journey, which sadly includes a fair load of erosional sediment, as well as industrial and agricultural chemicals.
Where the Chattahoochee passes Atlanta, it is not a large river. Evidently it once may have been larger, or at least longer. In ages past, the Chattahoochee's headwaters may have extended farther northeast: an old edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica, among other sources, claims that both the Chattooga and Tallulah rivers may have been its tributaries. In this scenario, the Savannah River's head eroded northwest until it captured the Chattooga and Tallulah, decapitating the Chattahoochee. I have difficulty seeing evidence of this event in northeast Georgia landforms. Color me skeptical.
See photos.
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