This waterway reduces the navigation distance from Tennessee, north Alabama, and northern Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico by hundreds of miles.

The final part of the Tennessee's run is north through western Kentucky, where it separates the Jackson Purchase from the rest of the state.

The commander in the western theater, General Henry Halleck, considered the Tennessee River to be more significant than the Mississippi.

[10][11] Georgia made several unsuccessful attempts to correct what Georgia felt was an erroneous survey line "in the 1890s, 1905, 1915, 1922, 1941, 1947 and 1971 to 'resolve' the dispute", according to C. Crews Townsend, Joseph McCoin, Robert F. Parsley, Alison Martin and Zachary H. Greene, in their May 12, 2008, article for the Tennessee Bar Journal, a publication of the Tennessee Bar Association.

[15] The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported on March 25, 2013, that Georgia senators approved House Resolution 4 stating that if Tennessee declines to settle with them, the dispute will be given to the state attorney general, to take Tennessee before the Supreme Court to settle the issue once and for all.

In a two-page resolution passed overwhelmingly by the state senate, Georgia declared that it, not its neighbor to the north, controls part of the Tennessee River at Nickajack.

It wants that water.The Tennessee River is an important part of the Great Loop, the recreational circumnavigation of Eastern North America by water.

[19] In addition, locks along the Tennessee River waterway provide passage between reservoirs for more than 13,000 recreational craft each year.

The Chickamauga Dam, located just upstream from Chattanooga, was projected in 2014 to have a new lock built, but it has been delayed due to a lack of funding.

Potters of the Mississippian culture used crushed mussel shell mixed into clay to make their pottery stronger.

[22] Mussel populations have declined drastically due to dam construction, water pollution, and invasive species.