Talk:Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line

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Baltimore and Elkridge on the Patapsco

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I revised the list because it was a little misleading. Baltimore lies on the tidal Patapsco, but the Patapsco actually crosses the Fall Line SW of the city, at Elkridge. Elkridge Landing was once an important head of navigation until siltation raised the river bed, forcing shipping downstream to Baltimore. The small streams that cross the Fall Line within Baltimore were more important for water power than for navigation.--Bardobro (talk) 18:30, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fall line at the Patuxent river

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I don't think there is a reason to exclude Laurel MD from the fall line cities, but due to the diffuse nature of the coastal escarpment in that area, the Patuxent was only navigable up to Upper Marlboro, MD, on its Western Branch tributary, and the historical settlement of Queen Anne in Prince Georges County on the main branch. So it is a little different in that regard from the other fall line cities located on tidal waters. Nonetheless the significant change in elevation of the river would have provided an energy resource. I can gather sources for this but I don't know exactly how to incorporate these into the article. Danblum (talk) 01:46, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The fall line is a geographic-define boundary so wherever the Piedmont meets and the Atlantic Seaboard. Typically you find navigable rivers up to where rapids are, but that's not always the case, like in Laurel. Another way to visualize it is over the past 100 million years, the oceans have risen and fallen dozens of times. The flat, sandy region is old ocean floor and the Piedmont the hills and the fall line the beach front. We'll be seeing it again, probably sooner than later. -- GreenC 03:53, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fall Line

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How can NYC be on the Fall Line if there are no rapids there 2603:6080:2E40:29F:F49E:7337:53E6:2206 (talk) 02:52, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

NYC is a bit messed up due to glaciers that scraped everything to bedrock and left large moraines like Long Island. From what I can tell, Manhattan and Long Island are in the Atlantic Seaboard and west of the Hudson is the Piedmont, making the Hudson the fall line but only at the very tail end around Manhattan. There are no rapids there, I think the flow of the Hudson eroded any rapids upstream into the Piedmont region, the salt line today is around Newburgh–Beacon Bridge but it moves around., it's kind of smoothed out. The fall line is a geographic boundary not one defined by rapids which are characteristic though not required. -- GreenC 03:46, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect

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Seeing the the content was essentially duplicate, and no one was likely interested in maintaining it enough to justify two pages, I merged the usable content from this article to the section Fall line#North American Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line and redirected there. I don't think a separation again is justified unless the content is significantly expanded. More comments on the talk page there. 2601:441:8500:B870:3CFC:D0CF:B26:F7D3 (talk) 22:54, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is the main article. There should only be one list. The problem was the parent article was a reverse content fork, the list was in two places. The solution was to pare down the main article to a paragraph or two, with a {{main article}} template pointing here, which has the more detailed information. Otherwise the main article was overweighted with detail about a single fall line. -- GreenC 04:19, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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Since my redirect was reversed and it established that this is to be the proper article on the topic, I moved the comments on my edits here and revised them:

In naming the fall line cities, I attempted to adhere to my definition of being the head of river navigation and/or the site of water power (so there could be two cities for a river, but not more). Notable examples removed or not added are:

  • Princeton, New Jersey - near the fall line, but the Millstone River is not navigable and joins the Raritan above it. Further, it has no particular location of fall. I judge this not to be a fall line settlement, and it had no source for it.
  • Fayetteville, North Carolina - definitely below the fall line and no source for placement there. It does not seem to be a natural head of navigation. The Cape Fear River does have an obvious fall line crossing next to Erwin, North Carolina but it does not seem to have been used either for navigation or power.== Comments ==

Since my redirect was reversed and it established that this is to be the proper article on the topic, I moved the comments on my edits here and revised them:

In naming the fall line cities, I attempted to adhere to my definition of being the head of river navigation and/or the site of water power (so there could be two cities for a river, but not more). Notable examples removed or not added are:

  • Princeton, New Jersey - near the fall line, but the Millstone River is not navigable and joins the Raritan above it. Further, it has no particular location of fall. I judge this not to be a fall line settlement, and it had no source for it.
  • Fayetteville, North Carolina - definitely below the fall line and no source for placement there. It does not seem to be a natural head of navigation. The Cape Fear River does have an obvious fall line crossing next to Erwin, North Carolina but it does not seem to have been used either for navigation or power.
Will correct myself; Fayetteville can be counted a head of navigation, being almost all the way to the fall line, and the steep gorge of the river leaves no good landing nearer to it (though it appears Averasboro may have been a farther port). A source is still desired to establish that it was founded as such. The existing NC source, which includes neither this nor the next, is only just better than nothing, not being based in geological knowledge.
On the other hand, will remove Lumberton, North Carolina, for which I never saw a source given. This is much farther still from the fall line, and the river is a subordinate tributary. Even though it probably was a head of navigation, so was Albany, Georgia, which would have essentially the same case. 2601:441:8500:B870:3CFC:D0CF:B26:F7D3 (talk) 01:57, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Montgomery, Alabama - possibly the end of useful navigation historically, but the river here is called the Alabama, not the Coosa or Tallapoosa, which join just upstream. In view of that, it would be confusing to add it and I wouldn't do it without a source.

Also, geographically the fall line does end in New Jersey from all I can see - no feature farther up the coast should be combined with it even though there are tidal stretches of river, and falls, this doesn't make them related. 2601:441:8500:B870:3CFC:D0CF:B26:F7D3 (talk) 17:39, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Montgomery, Alabama - possibly the end of useful navigation historically, but the river here is called the Alabama, not the Coosa or Tallapoosa, which join just upstream. In view of that, it would be confusing to add it and I wouldn't do it without a source.

Also, geographically the fall line does end in New Jersey from all I can see - no feature farther up the coast should be combined with it even though there are tidal stretches of river, and falls, this doesn't make them related. 2601:441:8500:B870:3CFC:D0CF:B26:F7D3 (talk) 17:39, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]