The Obed and Emory Gorges

The Obed and its creeks have cut down into the plateau sandstone in Morgan and Cumberland counties, and what they left is about forty-five miles of river in gorges, with bluffs up to 400 feet by the Park Service’s count and over 500 in places by the Tennessee Encyclopedia’s. The Obed River, Clear Creek, Daddys Creek and the upper Emory run over huge sandstone boulders, and the boulders make the rapids. On October 12, 1976, the rivers came into the national park system as the Obed Wild and Scenic River.

It is a park with almost nothing built in it. The federal government owns about 3,500 acres and private and state land make up another 1,723, and the Park Service has put up few facilities since 1976. Much of the ground in the gorges belongs to the Catoosa Wildlife Management Area and stays with the state wildlife agency, which works with the Park Service under an agreement to keep the river free-flowing and the country primitive. The visitor center is in Wartburg, the Morgan County seat.

People come for the water and the rock. Whitewater paddlers prize the fast water, climbers have put up more than 400 named routes on the sandstone, from 5.7 to 5.13, and the Cumberland Trail passes through by way of the Devil’s Breakfast Table. The Park Service counts four threatened or endangered species in the park.