Mission
WATR is a grassroots organization working to improve your water quality and habitat of the Tuckasegee River Basin. The Tuckasegee River watershed supplies the drinking water and ecosystem foundation for Swain and Jackson Counties. What happens upstream, downstream, and all around the watershed impacts all of us directly.
Welcome Watershed Stewards!
Please note: Our website domain address has changed from WatrNC.org to ProtectOurWaters-WNC.org
Explore the Tuckasegee River
Learn more about the Tuckasegee River’s history, culture, geography, climate and more.
The Tuckasegee River rises in the Blue Ridge mountains, in Pisgah National Forest west of Brevard, North Carolina. It flows some 50 miles (80 km) northwest past Cullowhee, Whittier, and Bryson City, near which it empties into Fontana Lake in the Little Tennessee River. Thorpe Dam (1941), on a fork of the Tuckasegee 22 miles (35 km) southeast of Bryson City, impounds Lake Glenville. The river’s name probably comes from that of a Cherokee village, Tsiksitsi (meaning “crawling terrapin,” for the sluggish movement of the waters), that once stood on its banks.