Sequatchie Valley

Look at a map of Tennessee and the Sequatchie Valley is the straight line. It runs southwest through the middle of the plateau about five miles wide and 1,000 to 1,500 feet deep, and it is so straight that it is hard to see from the floor, where side valleys break up the walls, and plain from the air. The rock here was arched up into an anticline, erosion broke through the sandstone cap along the crest, and the softer limestone beneath wore away. Walden Ridge stands on the southeast side and the wider, more broken plateau on the northwest.

At its head the valley is still being made. Grassy Cove, a few miles north, is a closed basin of about five square miles with a floor just above 1,500 feet and no surface outlet at all. Grassy Cove Creek runs north across it and drops into Mill Cave, and dye traces show the water travelling south underground to come out at Devilstep Hollow Cave as the start of the Sequatchie River. The geologists’ reading is that the whole valley grew from sinkholes like this one merging, and that Grassy Cove is one that hasn’t joined yet. Its karst is a National Natural Landmark. John Ford, a Revolutionary War veteran, found the cove in 1801 and took up a grant there, and with the sandstone gone it is some of the best farm ground on the plateau.

From the head the Sequatchie River runs south past Pikeville, Dunlap, Whitwell and Jasper to the Tennessee River near the Alabama line. South of Guntersville, in Alabama, the same valley goes on as Browns Valley.