The Middle Fork, 19.8 miles (31.9 km) long,[5] rises in an area of low hills, or knobs, also near the line with Bedford County, near Hoovers Gap, an important troop movement route during the American Civil War.

The East Fork runs well to the north of Murfreesboro, adjacent to the grounds of the Alvin C. York Veterans Affairs hospital, and is crossed by U.S. Highway 231 near the community of Walterhill, site of a former hydroelectric dam used for a power supply for the surrounding area prior to the advent of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

At the confluence, both are already somewhat slack because of the impoundment of J. Percy Priest Dam, a United States Army Corps of Engineers development constructed during the 1960s and named for a former Nashville Congressman.

In 1979 the dam was bombed with dynamite as ruse to cover a crime spree supposed to have taken place in the resultant massive flooding.

The Stones River is now thought of primarily in terms of its major impoundment, Percy Priest Lake, and is important to the Nashville area.