It flows for just over 46 miles (74 km) from its source near Frozen Head State Park to its mouth along the Clinch River at Kingston, Tennessee.

The surrounding area has been the subject of extensive strip mining for coal which has resulted in some stream pollution.

Backwaters of the Watts Bar Lake impoundment of the Tennessee River cause the water below Harriman to be somewhat slack.

The mouth of the Emory is into the Clinch River at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Power Plant, a coal-fired electric generation station initially developed during World War II, largely to power the uranium enrichment plants used to make the world's first atomic bomb at nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill heavily polluted the Emory River and surrounding area.