Teays River

The Teays River network, which existed before disruption by glaciers during the Pleistocene. Reconstruction is based on the discovery of large buried valleys in West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana and other evidence.

The Teays River /ˈteɪz/[1] (pronounced taze) was a major preglacial river that drained much of the present Ohio River watershed, but took a more northerly downstream course. Traces of the Teays across northern Ohio and Indiana are represented by a network of river valleys. The largest still existing contributor to the former Teays River is the Kanawha River in West Virginia, which is itself an extension of the New River. The name "Teays," from the much smaller Teays Valley still extant above the surface, has been associated with the river and the remainder of its related buried valley since 1910.[2] The more appropriate name would be the Ancestral Kanawha Valley.[3] The term Teays is used when discussing the buried portion of the Ancestral Kanawha River.[3] The Teays was comparable in size to the Ohio River. The River's headwaters were near Blowing Rock, North Carolina; it then flowed through Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. (Hansen, 1995).[4] The largest tributary to the Teays River was the Old Kentucky River (Teller 1991), which extended from southern Kentucky through Frankfort and subsequently flowed northeast, meeting other tributaries and eventually joining the Teays.[4]

  1. ^ Sullivan, Walter (November 29, 1983). "A Great Lost River Gets Its Due". The New York Times. Retrieved May 19, 2009. [William G. Tight] called it the Teays (pronounced taze) River, for a village in West Virginia.
  2. ^ The Glacial Boundary in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois; George Frederick Weight; Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey No. 58; Washington, Government Printing Office; 1890; pg 86-88
  3. ^ a b Glacial Geology of Wabash County, Indiana: William J. Wayne and William D. Thornbury; Indiana Department of Conservation, Geological Survey; Bulletin No. 5; Bloomington, Indiana; 1951
  4. ^ a b Teays River; ES 767 Quaternary Geology, Fall 2011; Wesley C. Smith; Emporia State University, Earth Science Department: Webpage submitted on November 28, 2011