page_title: Geography of North Carolina
section_title: River systems
hierarchical_section_title: Geography of North Carolina / River systems
caption_attribution_description: English: French Broad River in Henderson County, North Carolina
context_page_description: The geography of North Carolina falls naturally into three divisions — the Appalachian Mountains in the west, the central Piedmont Plateau, and the eastern Atlantic Coastal Plain. North Carolina covers 53,821 square miles and is 503 miles long by 150 miles wide. The physical characteristics of the state vary from the summits of the Smoky Mountains, an altitude of near seven thousand feet in the west, sloping eastward to sea level along the coast and beaches of the Atlantic Ocean.
context_section_description: Seventeen major river basins have covered at least part of the state of North Carolina. These rivers can be broadly divided into three groups.  In the extreme western part of the state, there are rivers that flow in a northwesterly direction, draining into the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi River.  In the central part of the state, rivers flow generally southward into South Carolina before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. In the eastern part of the state, most of the rivers flow generally in an eastward or southeastward direction, before emptying into one of the sounds that separate the mainland of North Carolina from the Outer Banks. 
  The divide between the Atlantic and Gulf watersheds, part of a larger divide known as the Eastern Continental Divide, lies not along the Smoky Mountains, the tallest in the state, but rather along the lower Blue Ridge Mountains to the east.  The western slopes of the Blue Ridge form the headwaters of the French Broad and the Kanawha Rivers.  Through the taller Smoky Mountains, these rivers pass through deep canyons known as water gaps.  For example the Hiawassee River and its tributaries follow a series of canyons between Cleveland, Tennessee and Murphy, North Carolina, part of which can be followed driving along the Ocoee Scenic Byway.
  The rivers of central North Carolina rise on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge. The two largest of these are the Catawba River and the Yadkin River, and they drain much of the Piedmont region of the state.
  The major rivers of Eastern North Carolina, from north to south, are: the Chowan, the Roanoke, the Tar, the Neuse and the Cape Fear. Many of those rivers are navigable far inland, owing to their breadth as they traverse the low, flat Atlantic Coastal Plain in the eastern part of the state.
caption: The French Broad River flows northwest out of North Carolina before eventually reaching the Mississippi River via the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers
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