Through the Mountains: The French Broad River and Time

Winner, North Carolina Society of Historians Award of Excellence Two generations have passed since the publication of Wilma Dykeman’s landmark environmental history, The French Broad.In Through the Mountains: The French Broad River and Time, John Ross updates that seminal book with groundbreaking new research.More than the story of a single river, Through the Mountains covers the entire watershed from its headwaters in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains to its mouth in Knoxville, Tennessee.The French Broad watershed has faced new perils and seen new discoveries since 1955, when The French Broad was published.Geologists have learned that the Great Smoky Mountains are not among the world’s oldest as previously thought; climatologists and archaeologists have traced the dramatic effects of global warming and cooling on the flora, fauna, and human habitation in the watershed; and historians have deepened our understanding of enslaved peoples once thought not to be a p