The Rappahannock River is a river in eastern Virginia, in the United States, approximately 195 miles (314 km) in length. It traverses the entire northern part of the state, from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the west, across the Piedmont, to the Chesapeake Bay, south of the Potomac River.
An important river in American history, the Rappahannock was the site of early settlements in the Virginia Colony, and, later, it was at the center of a major theatre of battle in the American Civil War. Due to its significance as an obstacle to north-south movements, it, in effect, functioned as the war's eastern-theatre boundary, between the "North" (the Union) and the "South" (the Confederate States of America).
The river drains an area of 2,848 square miles (7,380 km2), approximately 6% of Virginia. Much of the watershed is rural and forested, but it has experienced increased development in recent decades because of the southward expansion of the Washington, D.C. suburbs.
Read more about Rappahannock River: Description of The Watercourse, The Oysters, 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)