Levisa Fork

The Levisa Fork (also known as the Levisa Fork River or the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River) is a tributary of the Big Sandy River, approximately 164 miles (264 km) long, in southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky in the United States.

It rises in the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia, in eastern Buchanan County, near Grundy. It flows west into Pike County, Kentucky, where it receives the Russell Fork and is impounded to form Fishtrap Lake reservoir, then northwest past Pikeville and Prestonsburg. The natural course of the river formed a loop surrounding downtown Pikeville, but a massive earthmoving project completed in 1987 rerouted the river to bypass the city. At Paintsville it turns to the north-northeast, flowing through Johnson and Lawrence counties. It joins the Tug Fork from the southwest at Louisa on the West Virginia state line to form the Big Sandy.

The river is partly navigable for commercial purposes through a series of locks. In the early 1900s the river was navigable as far as Pikeville.

Variant names, according to the USGS, include Louisa River, Louisa Fork, Lavisa Fork, and West Fork, in addition to Levisa Fork River and Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River. The official name according to the USGS is Levisa Fork. According to Robert F. Collins of the United States Forest Service, Dr. Thomas Walker had named the nearby Kentucky River the Louisa River, after Princess Louisa, sister of Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (Walker had just named the Cumberland River a month or two earlier). According to George R. Stewart, frontiersmen "forgot" who it was named for and it changed over time to Levisa. (It should be noted that Levisa Chafin was the wife of Devil Anse Hatfield, patriarch of the Hatfield clan during the Hatfield-McCoy feud.)