The Greatest American River
     Ancient river. Time for a foray into the past which shaped the present.  In West Virginia, long before the present day, there existed the greatest of all American rivers.  Its name is memorialized in the valley now traversed by Interstate 64 between Huntington and Charleston:  the Teays (rhymes with "haze").

     Its genesis was millions of years prior to the Ice Age which lasted from about 1-2 million years ago until 10,000 years ago when the glacier melted. The Ice Age actually was a series of alternating warm (interglacials) and cold (glacials) periods. The river's origin was in the original Appalachian Mountains which it substantially wore down to the Appalachian Peneplain. 

      Its course was from the Blue Ridge in North Carolina, then northerly across Virginia and along the same northwesterly route as is followed by the New and Kanawha Rivers today, then to Huntington, Ashland (Ky.) and Portsmouth (Oh.) where it swerved northward to Chillicothe (Oh.).   If you drive along Route 23 toward that Chillicothe, you will pass a sign for a Teays Valley school. 

      Next it moved westwardly to Illinois and turned southward past St. Louis and entered a northern arm of the Gulf of Mexico which extended into what is now Illinois.  The Teays River was a thousand miles in length.

      The gorge. The Teays flowed in a winding manner along the flattened Appalachian Peneplain.  When the peneplain was uplifted into the plateau, the river was carried upward on the surface of the rising land.  Its gradient steepened, the Teays continued to flow downslope to the Gulf of Mexico, deepening the channel in the bedrock while retaining its winding course. 

     Rejuvenated, the Teays carved a deep gorge now known as the New River Gorge which today is spanned by a unique bridge favored by bungee jumpers and parachutists and is the site of the popular Bridge Day in October.  To read about the New River Gorge you can access http://www.nps.gov/neri/   To read about and visualize the geology of tne New River Gorge and its bedrock click on http://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/... and http://www/wvgs.wvnet.edu/...

      Glaciers and lake. The Teays River ceased to exist during the Ice Age.  Four times glaciers between 10,000 and 13,000 feet thick advanced across North America and retreated. The glaciers spread across the the entire southern half of the Teays Valley between Chillicothe and its mouth south of St. Louis.  Vast amounts of sand and gravel carried by the glaciers filled the valley and left a thick ground moraine.  The immense wall of ice acted as a dam and created a lake about 200 miles long extending from Chillicothe to Hawk's Nest State Park in West Virginia. The lake lasted for 25,000 years.

      In Pennsylvania the northern portions of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers were buried, eventually uniting their headwaters at Pittsburgh and creating the headwaters of the Ohio River. Water rose in the lake until it found an overflow point near Portsmouth and began to flow toward Cincinnati and southern Indiana and Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.  This course became the lower part of the Ohio River.

      The only portion of the Ohio River which occupies the Teays Valley is the 50-mile-stretch from Huntington to Portsmouth.  To learn more, study maps, and see photos:  http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/... and http://eostest2.gsfc.nasa.gov/...       
Last updated on Friday, September 29, 2000