The Tennessee River, formed by the confluence of the Holston and and French Broad Rivers in Knoxville, Tennessee, flows generally southwesterly leaving the image near its lower-left corner. It lies southeast of the Cumberland Plateau and northwest of the Appalachian Mountains. The oldest river in North America, the misnamed New River, flows northward out of North Carolina, across southwestern Virginia, and into West Virginia where it joins the Greenbriar to become the Kanawha, which flows through Charleston to join the Ohio River. Its course probably predates the rise of the Appalachian Mountains. Its southwest to northeast valley can be seen clearly in the vicinity of about 37.5 degrees north and 80.8 degrees west.
Topographic style contrasts sharply from one region to another.
The smooth loess plains of Illinois, central and western Ohio, and northwestern Kentucky give way to the dendritic drainage patterns characteristic of the flat-lying sedimentary rocks of the Cumberland Plateau. The Cumberland escarpment marks the southeastern boundary of of the plateau beyond which are the ridges and valleys of the folded Appalachians. The metamorphic core of the mountains forms irregular, rugged, and deeply eroded topography culminating in the wilderness areas within and near Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Another escarpment marks the southwestern edge of the Appalachians and the beginning of the Piedmont physiographic province. Outliers of resistant rock types form sharp peaks on the upper Piedmont of North Carolina.