The Beech River is a 38.3-mile-long (61.6 km)[1] stream draining the east-central portion of West Tennessee in the United States.
As is typical of most major streams in West Tennessee, much of the lower course was the subject of a channelization project in the mid-20th century conducted largely for agricultural purposes; this has resulted in a considerable loss of wetland.
The Beech River system is somewhat unusual in that it and all of its major tributaries (a total of eight) are impounded, one of them twice, primarily by dams built in the mid 20th century as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Beech River Project—Beech,[4] Cedar,[5] Dogwood,[6] Lost Creek (which has no permanent reservoir),[7] Pin Oak,[8] Pine,[9] Redbud,[10] and Sycamore.
[11] The dams are purely for purposes of flood control and recreation, though it is possible that the relatively small volume of water they store could result in some minimal aid to navigation on the Tennessee under some conditions.
Unlike most other TVA dams, none of the Beech River dams are used for hydropower, since the small size of the streams impounded and their relative lack of fall would make power generation impractical.