[1] The river flows through the Black Warrior Basin, a region historically important for the extraction of coal and methane.

The cities of Tuscaloosa and Northport grew at the historical head of navigation at the fall line between the Appalachian Highlands (specifically, the Cumberland Plateau) and the Gulf Coastal Plain.

Past Oliver Dam, immediately west of downtown Tuscaloosa, the Black Warrior flows generally south in a highly meandering course, joining the Tombigbee River from the northeast at Demopolis.

[citation needed] To develop the coal industries of central Alabama, the US government in the 1880s began building a system of locks and dams that concluded in 17 impoundments.

Birmingham became the "Pittsburgh of the South", shipping iron and steel products via the Black Warrior River through the Panama Canal to the West Coast of the United States and the world.

Coal mining and production in west-central Alabama is one of the larger employers and is likely to continue being important to the energy needs of the world.

[citation needed] Today, a severe threat to the Black Warrior River is sedimentation, or siltation, the primary causes of which are development projects, logging and mining operations, and the building and maintaining of roads.