Navigable river, Tennessee, northern Alabama, and western Kentucky, U.S. Formed by the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers in eastern Tennessee, it flows 652 mi (1,049 km) before joining the Ohio River in Kentucky.
During the American Civil War it served as a strategic invasion route into the western Confederacy. Its development as one of the world's greatest irrigation and hydropower systems began with the establishment in 1933 of the Tennessee Valley Authority . The Tennessee River is linked to the Tombigbee River by the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.