Navigable river, Tennessee, northern Alabama, and western Kentucky, U.S. Formed by the confluence of the Holston and 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 {{link=Tombigbee River">Tombigbee River by the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.