The Roanoke River is a river in southern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina in the United States, 410 mi (660 km) long. A major river of the southeastern United States, it drains a largely rural area of the coastal plain from the eastern edge of the Appalachian Mountains southeast across the Piedmont to Albemarle Sound. An important river throughout the history of the United States, it was the site of early settlement in the Virginia Colony and the Carolina Colony. Most of its upper course in Virginia between the City of Roanoke and Clarksville is known as the Staunton River. It is impounded along much of its middle course to form a chain of reservoirs.
In 2011, American Rivers named the Roanoke (Staunton) River the 3rd Most Endangered River in the country. It earned this position due to the possibility of uranium mining on one of its tributaries at the Coles Hill Uranium Deposit near Danville, Virginia.
Read more about Roanoke River: Description, History
Famous quotes containing the word river:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)