Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line
The Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line, or Fall Zone, is a 900-mile (1,400 km) escarpment where the Piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain meet in the eastern United States.[1] Much of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line passes through areas where no evidence of faulting is present.
The fall line marks the geologic boundary of hard metamorphosed terrain—the product of the Taconic orogeny—and the sandy, relatively flat outwash plain of the upper continental shelf, formed of unconsolidated Cretaceous and Cenozoic sediments. Examples of the Fall Zone include the Potomac River's Great Falls and the rapids in Richmond, Virginia, where the James River falls across a series of rapids down to its own tidal estuary.
Before navigation improvements such as locks, the fall line was generally the head of navigation on rivers due to their rapids or waterfalls, and the necessary portage around them. The Great Falls of the Potomac River is one example. Because of the commercial traffic, required labor and availability of water power to operate mills, numerous cities were founded at the intersection of rivers and the fall line. U.S. Route 1 links many of the fall line cities.
In 1808, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin noted the significance of the fall line as an obstacle to improved national communication and commerce between the Atlantic seaboard and the western river systems:[2]
The most prominent, though not perhaps the most insuperable obstacle in the navigation of the Atlantic rivers, consists in their lower falls, which are ascribed to a presumed continuous granite ridge, rising about one hundred and thirty feet above tide water. That ridge from New York to James River inclusively arrests the ascent of the tide; the falls of every river within that space being precisely at the head of the tide; pursuing thence southwardly a direction nearly parallel to the mountains, it recedes from the sea, leaving in each southern river an extent of good navigation between the tide and the falls. Other falls of less magnitude are found at the gaps of the Blue Ridge, through which the rivers have forced their passage...
Notable cities
Some cities that lie along the Piedmont—Coastal Plain fall line include the following (from north to south):
- Paterson, New Jersey on the Passaic River
- Trenton, New Jersey on the Delaware River.[1]
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the Schuylkill River.[3]
- Wilmington, Delaware on Brandywine Creek.[3]
- Newark, Delaware on the Christina River.[citation needed]
- Stanton, Delaware on the White Clay Creek.
- Elkton, Maryland on the Elk River.
- Perryville, Maryland and Havre de Grace, Maryland on the Susquehanna River.
- Baltimore, Maryland, on Herring Run, Jones Falls, and Gwynns Falls.
- Elkridge, Maryland on the Patapsco River.
- Laurel, Maryland on the Patuxent River.[citation needed]
- Washington, D.C. on the Potomac River.[4]
- Occoquan, Virginia on the Occoquan River.[citation needed]
- Fredericksburg, Virginia on the Rappahannock River.[4]
- Richmond, Virginia on the James River.[5]
- Petersburg, Virginia on the Appomattox River.[citation needed]
- Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina on the Roanoke River.[citation needed]
- Raleigh, North Carolina on the Neuse River.[citation needed]
- Greenville, North Carolina on the Tar River.[citation needed]
- Fayetteville, North Carolina on the Cape Fear River.[citation needed]
- Cheraw, South Carolina on the Pee Dee River.[citation needed]
- Camden, South Carolina on the Wateree River.[citation needed]
- Columbia, South Carolina on the Congaree River.[5]
- Augusta, Georgia on the Savannah River.[citation needed]
- Milledgeville, Georgia on the Oconee River.
- Macon, Georgia on the Ocmulgee River.
- Columbus, Georgia on the Chattahoochee River.[1]
 |
| State | Point (crossing) | Elevation & coordinates | Fall zone: drop/width (slope) |
Geomorphology Piedmont—Coastal plain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | New Brunswick (Raritan River) | 460 ft (140 m)40°29′18″N 74°26′52″W / 40.48833°N 74.44778°W | ||
| Trenton (Delaware River) | 40°13′18″N 74°45′22″W / 40.22167°N 74.75611°W | 8 ft | ||
| Pennsylvania | Philadelphia (Schuylkill River by I-76) | |||
| Delaware | Wilmington (Brandywine Creek) | |||
| Maryland | Conowingo Dam (Susquehanna) | |||
| Ellicott City[6] (Patapsco) | 39°16.044′N 76°47.573′W / 39.267400°N 76.792883°W[1] | crystalline rock—unconsolidate marine sediments [2] | ||
| Great Falls (Potomac River) | 38°59′51″N 77°15′9″W / 38.99750°N 77.25250°W | 76 ft/<1 mi (>1.4%) | ||
| Virginia | Fredericksburg (Rappahannock) | 39°16.044′N 76°47.573′W / 39.267400°N 76.792883°W[3] | [west of Interstate 95 bridge][7] | |
| Emporia (Meherrin River)[8] |
References
- ^ a b c Freitag, Bob (2009). Floodplain Management: A New Approach for a New Era. Island Press. p. 77. ISBN 978-1-59726-635-2. Retrieved 17 November 2010.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ [Report on] Roads and Canals, Communicated to the Senate April 4, 1808, p.729
- ^ a b Shamsi, Nayyar (2006). Encyclopaedia of Political Geography. Anmol Publications. pp. 92–93. ISBN 978-81-261-2406-0. Retrieved 17 November 2010.
- ^ a b Deane, Winegar (2002). Highroad Guide to Chesapeake Bay. John F. Blair. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-89587-279-1. Retrieved 17 November 2010.
- ^ a b Roberts, David C. (2001). Roger Tory Peterson (ed.). A Field Guide to Geology: Eastern North America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 242. ISBN 978-0-618-16438-7. Retrieved 17 November 2010.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthor=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ "History/Culture". PatapscoHeritageGreenway.org. Retrieved 2010-09-07.
George Ellicott House: A block away is the 1789 George Ellicott House at 24 Frederick Road., which has been saved, moved out of the flood plain, and restored. The Ellicott family settled here along the fall line of the Patapsco River in 1772 and built an innovative, water-powered flour mill
- ^ "Fall Line". VirginiaPlaces.org. Retrieved 2010-08-13.
- ^ "River and "Fall Line" Cities". VirginiaPlaces.org. Retrieved 2010-08-13.