View of the New River in Pembroke,
Virginia
This river has claim as one of the
oldest rivers in the world. It starts in North Carolina running
north into Virginia. It appears to climb into the mountains as it flows
through deep gorges on its journey to meet up with the Great Kanawha
River in West Virginia.
Despite its name, the river is
considered by some geologists to be possibly the oldest river in the
world, between 10 million and 360 million years old. According to local
folklore, it is considered to be second in age only to the Nile River
and thus the oldest in North America. However, the ages of rivers are
very difficult to establish with precision as the wide range of possible
ages for the New River demonstrates; there is no established ranking of
the ages of major rivers. The New River flows in a generally south to
north course, which is against the southwest to northeast topology of
the Appalachian Mountains and the west to east flow of most other nearby
major rivers especially in Virginia and North Carolina. This peculiarity
may mean that the New River's formation preceded much of the surrounding
landscape, although again this hypothesis has not been proven beyond
doubt.
The first recorded European
exploration of the New River was the fur trading Batts-Fallam expedition
of 1671, sent by Abraham Wood. Variant names of the New River include
"Wood's River", after Abraham Wood. (Wikipedia)
