The headwaters of the Chattooga River flow out of North Carolina’s Nantahala National Forest. The river’s wild corridor is a favorite of trout anglers. Photo © Kevin Adams.

By Geoffrey Cantrell
Forest Magazine, Spring 2004

When the U.S. Forest Service began to revise its resource plan for the Chattooga River in 1995 through the jurisdiction of Sumter National Forest in South Carolina, usual allies in clean water issues soon found themselves at odds.

The upper twenty miles of this famously remote southeastern river is off-limits to kayaks, rafts and canoes. In the new resource plan process, paddlers began efforts to allow—they say regain—access to the upper Chattooga River’s waterfalls and steep boulder-strewn rapids.

“This is simple discrimination against one particular user group,” says Don Kinser, a director with American Whitewater. “To deny us access makes no sense. There is no adverse environmental impact, and the supposed conflicts with fishermen are anecdotal, not scientific, accounts. The policy is inconsistent with all other resource management by the Forest Service.”

But anglers and the Chattooga Conservancy, a local nonprofit environmental group based in Clayton, Georgia, oppose opening this part of the river to whitewater traffic.

“For the angler, there is simply no other place with the unique combination of the large-size free-flowing stream, the excellent trail access, the backcountry solitude experience, the remoteness, the awesome beauty and the quality of trout fishing that is found in this boating-free section of the Chattooga River,” says Doug Adams, an executive committee member of the Georgia Council of Trout Unlimited who has fished the river since 1955. “The solitude of the limited access area … should be a quality to be protected instead of being further developed.”

The Chattooga is as rugged and scenic an area as you can find in the Southeast, with deep greens and blues broken by the grays of massive rock faces. But it is a rare account of the Chattooga River that doesn’t mention the infamous 1972 Academy AwardÐnominated movie Deliverance, starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds. In 1974, following the success of the movie, Congress designated it a wild and scenic river. The rushing rapids and natural flumes that attracted four fictional characters have attracted thousands of very real boaters every year since.

The river and the adjacent public lands are managed by the Forest Service. Beginning in southwestern North Carolina near the resort towns of Highlands and Cashiers, the Chattooga River flows south for ten miles and crosses the state line to form the boundary between northeast Georgia and northwest South Carolina. The surrounding terrain is heavily forested, thanks to abundant rainfall that approaches rain forest categories and holds some of the most diverse plant life on the planet. There are archaeological sites of American Indians, early pioneers and explorers. Adjoining the headwaters is the Ellicott Wilderness Area, nearly 9,000 acres of old growth and pristine forest. There are only three bridges for vehicular traffic crossing this portion of the river, listed by Trout Unlimited as among the United States’ 100 best trout streams.

The river flows uninterrupted through the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina, the Sumter National Forest and the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia before it’s backed up by a dam at Tugaloo Lake, fifty-seven miles south.

A walk on any trail along the river is well rewarded, whether a day hike or a backpacking excursion. Trails range from moderate to strenuous, are usually well marked, and numerous guidebooks and maps are available. Among the more popular and celebrated trails near the Chattooga is the Bartram Trail, named for the southeastern route taken by eighteenth-century naturalist William Bartram, who traveled and recorded his explorations and botanical discoveries of the region in the 1770s.

Ellicott Rock, named for an early surveyor and itself the namesake of the wilderness area, is a hike for the adventurous to find the first boundary marker for the corner of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Often underwater, it is also a bit inaccurate. Ten feet downstream is Commissioners Rock, inscribed “Lat 35 AD 1813 NCSC,” where the three states more likely meet.

Hemlock, northern red oak and tulip poplar are the predominant hardwoods, mixed in a forest with evergreens of white pines. Often thick tangles of rhododendron form almost impenetrable spots known in local vernacular as “rhododendron hells,” which are heavenly when they bloom in the spring.

Cascading waterfalls are plenty on the Chattooga River and its numerous tributaries. Ancient geologic forces created granite cliffs, often hundreds of feet high in the headwaters section.

The beauty and the accessibility of the river may be its undoing, though. Its lush forests are within a day’s drive of half the population of the United States, at the heart of a corridor of wildlands facing increasing pressure in the Southeast. Anglers and boaters are not alone in seeking escape here; a diverse array of hikers, mountain bikers, rock climbers and nature lovers in search of outdoor recreation gravitate to the river.

In the final version of the Chattooga resource plan, made public in February 2004, the Forest Service recommended keeping the status quo on no boating, adding more land for preservation and limiting acres open to logging.

“Even those who might disagree with the final decisions would at least agree that we provided more than ample opportunities for the public to ask questions and tell us what they think about the issues,” says Mike Crane, district ranger for Andrew Pickens Ranger District in the Sumter National Forest. “This new plan will emphasize sustained and improved natural habitats and processes for plants and animals, and it will also protect those special recreational activities that just aren’t available anywhere else. I think ten to fifteen years from now the forest will be healthier and more diverse than it is today.”

Forest Magazine | FSEEE