A County of Ridges, Valleys and Rivers:
Along the northwest boundary runs Flint
or Chestnut Ridge. It receives its former name from
the character of the rock forming it, which is a kind of chert,
resembling true flint. The latter name is derived form the
chestnut timber which abounds there.
On the west side, in a divide of the ridge, lies a short section of a
narrow valley known as Raccoon Valley.
On the east side it slopes gradually into Bull Run Valley,
which receives its name from Bull Run Creek,
a tributary of the Clinch (River)
which flows through it. On the east side of this valley Copper
Ridge rises somewhat abruptly, and beyond the ridge is Beaver
Creek Valley, which is one of the richest in the country, and
was one of the earliest settled. It is divided throughout the
middle by Beaver Creek.
Lying between Beaver and Black Oak Ridges
is the section of a valley known as Hind's Valley, the
lower half of which is watered by Hickory
Creek, a tributary of the Clinch. The soil of this
valley is generally light and thin, but is well adapted to grass, and is
capable of improvement. The fertile section bounded by Black
Oak and Webb's Ridges is known as Grassy
Valley. It, unlike the others, does not slope gradually
from northeast to southwest, but is crossed transversely by small ridges
and depression. Black Oak Ridge constitutes the watershed between
the waters of the Tennessee and the Clinch.
Poor Valley lies between Webb's
Ridge and McAnnally's Ridge.
As its name indicates its soil is poor, consisting of the washings of
the shale and dolomite, which make up the ridges. The largest
valley in the county is the Central or Knoxville
Valley, otherwise known as Rocky Valley or New
Market Valley, which constitutes the valley of the Tennessee
River. The soil is composed of shale, chart,
limestone and dolomite, which have washed down from the surrounding
ridges on a clay sub-soil, the whole of which is mixed with more or less
iron which gives it a reddish color. This constitutes the most
fertile portion of the county, and is made up of excellent farming
lands.
A part of the county southeast of the French
Broad and Tennessee Rivers
constitutes what is known as the Knobby region, in which
the parallelism incident to the other sections is broken up. It
consists of a vast group of red-topped hills of remarkable
uniformity of size and shape rising above the plane of the valley from
200-400 feet, and separated from each other by rough, irregular
ravines. The formation is described by State Geologist Safford as
red ferruginous, sandy, fossilferous, limestone, interstratified with
calcareous stratia of floggy limestone. The soil of the valleys,
which are very narrow, is exceedingly fertile, and produces good crops
of corn, oats and wheat. The creeks from this region on account of
its peculiar configuration are small. They are:
- Hind (Creek) and Mill
Shoal (Creek) emptying into the French
Broad (River);
- Baker (Creek), Hodge
(Creek) and Knob (Creek),
tributaries of the Tennessee (River)
- Stock Creek
flowing into Little River.
