From Lake Oliver to Fort Moore, the Chattahoochee Riverwalk provides cycling, rollerblading, and walking along 15 miles (24 km) of the river's banks.

The name Chattahoochee is thought to come from a Muskogee word meaning "rocks-marked" (or "painted"), from chato ("rock") plus huchi ("marked").

A Late Cretaceous system of paleovalleys incised into the Coastal Plain unconformity in the vicinity of Columbus, Georgia is infilled with fluvial sands and gravels of the lower Tuscaloosa Formation.

Younger rocks of the overlying Eutaw Formation record an estuarine environment in approximately the same location, suggesting a persistent paleodrainage system in the vicinity of the modern Chattahoochee for at least 10-20 million years during the Late Cretaceous.

[7] North of the Fall Line, in the Piedmont of Georgia and Alabama, the course of the Chattahoochee River cuts across prominent, resistant rock layers, including the Hollis Quartzite of the Pine Mountain belt, and must have established its current course prior to uplift of those units.

[8][9] The Chattahoochee River was of considerable strategic importance during the Atlanta Campaign by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman of the American Civil War.

Johnston agreed, and Shoup supervised the building of 36 small elevated earth and wooden triangular fortifications, arranged in a sawtooth pattern to maximize the crossfire of defenders.

The nine remaining Shoupades consist of the earthworks portion of the original earth and wooden structures; they are endangered by land development in the area.

Between 2010 and 2013, construction took place on the river, the Eagle and Phenix and City Mills Dams were breached and a 2.5 mile Whitewater Course was formed in Uptown, Columbus.

The project returned the river to its natural path across the Fall Line, as well as creating the longest urban whitewater course in the world.

The dams and reservoirs were developed following legislation by Congress of the mid-1940s for flood control, domestic and industrial water, hydroelectricity, recreation, and improved navigation for river barges.

[12] Numerous historic and prehistoric sites were covered over by the lakes during the flooding of the reservoirs, including Oketeyconne, Georgia.

Wealthy suburban communities in northern metro Atlanta that abut the river include: Vinings, Buckhead, Sandy Springs, East Cobb, Roswell, Dunwoody, Peachtree Corners, Duluth, Johns Creek, and Berkeley Lake.

Interest groups and the state of Florida have asked the U.S. Congress to intervene to reduce the priority given to put navigation of the lower Chattahoochee, south of Columbus, by river barge.

Forecasts are issued only during high water at Norcross, Whitesburg, West Point, and the Lake Walter F. George and Andrews Dams.

Tributary creeks, streams, and rivers, as well as lakes, along with the county they are in: Note that the above list is incomplete, and that each item is not in the exact order in which it joins the Chattahoochee.

[29] Composer Juan María Solare wrote a piano piece called Chattahoochee River, technically a slow blues with a central faster section.