By Billy Winn

Billy Winn is the former editorial page editor of the Columbus Ledger Enquirer and is the author of The Old Beloved Path: Daily Life Among the Indians of the Chattahoochee River Valley. Illustration by Garry Pound.

The first mention that I know of in literature about the river occurs in Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins’s travel log of the Chattahoochee River and the Creek country in the year 1798, 1799. And basically, what Hawkins says in there is that Chattahoochee was a town north of us here at that time, which he says is the founding town on this part of the river. And he says that it got its name from the Creek ‘Chatto,’ a stone, and ‘hoche,’ marked or flowered. There’s no way to spell it exactly because the Creeks didn’t have a written language at the time, but basically it would be Chato oochee. (more…)

Editors note: When Sherri and I were researching and writing the Riverkeeper’s Guide to the Chattahoochee and the Flint River Guidebook, we took numerous trips up and down both rivers, often “locking through” at the Walter F. George Dam, the George W. Andrews Dam and the Jim Woodruff Dam. It’s a river experience we highly recommend to anyone really interested in experiencing and understanding Southern Rivers. Here is our account of our first experience locking through the Woodruff Dam. See the illlustration at the end of the locking through process for a visual image of what it’s like to make the transition from lake to river. The third person in the boat is Rio, our literary companion on our travels up and down the Flint River and an important character in the Flint Guidebook. FB. Illustrations by Roel Wielinga.

One of the most interesting and anticipated experiences traveling up or down the lower Chattahoochee is that of going through the locks. Three dams on the Chattahoochee River, Walter F. George, George W. Andrews and Jim Woodruff, have navigation locks that allow recreational as well as commercial boats to travel both upstream and downstream. The locks are necessary to transfer boats from one water level to another.  “Locking through” can cause anxiety the first time you do it, but it is relatively easy if you are prepared and follow the proper procedure. (more…)

Sixteen dams harness the power of the Chattahoochee as it rolls towards Apalachicola Bay–nine of those in the Columbus area alone. If you are navigating down the river, you must portage around the first thirteen dams and lock through the last three. Once through the last lock, the Chattahoochee turns into the Apalachicola and runs free for 107 miles to the Bay. To view all of the dams, along with a description of each one, on a Chattahoochee River corridor map, click here. Brief descriptions of each of the dams are included below and more detailed descriptions, along with photos of all of the dams, are included on the map. Illustration by Roel Wielinga. (more…)

By Doug Purcell
Executive Director, Historic Chattahoochee Commission

Interestingly southeast Alabama and southwest Georgia share a water resource known, over time, by at least three names—Walter F. George Lake, Lake Eufaula and Lake Chattahoochee. This U. S. Army Corps of Engineers impoundment was formed following the construction of the Walter F. George Lock and Dam at Fort Gaines, Georgia in 1963. Today the lake covers 45,192 acres, is 85 miles long and has a 640 mile shoreline. In 2007 almost 3.8 million visitors took advantage of this asset for fishing, boating, sailing, skiing and a variety of other uses.

To further complicate the situation, the sprawling impoundment has obscured the western Georgia boundary where the Chattahoochee River intersects with a portion of Alabama’s eastern boundary. That boundary was established by the (more…)