The Black Warrior River watershed is 6,276 square miles, contained entirely within Alabama. Beginning in North central Alabama as three tributaries - the Sipsey Fork, Mulberry Fork, & Locust Fork - the river then flows southwest for roughly 300 miles past Birmingham and Tuscaloosa to its confluence with the Tombigbee River at Demopolis.
The Black Warrior River and its tributaries are a major source of drinking water for many cities including Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Cullman, Oneonta, and Jasper.
The most untouched of the river's headwater tributaries, the Sipsey exhibits the greatest biodiversity and is the only one of the three forks with a healthy population of Coosa bass, the "canary in the coal mine" of bass species.
The Mulberry Fork is the most developed of the three headwater forks of the Black Warrior River. Because of fish kills in the 1960s, caused by both agricultural and industrial pollution, the Mulberry has a more simplified aquatic environment than the other Black Warrior forks.
The Locust Fork is the only headwater fork of the Black Warrior River that rises in a region other than the Cumberland Plateau, in a physiographic province known as Sand Mountain.
The Locust Fork - with thousands of spotted bass per river mile - is the best all-around fly-fishing river of the three forks of the Black Warrior, surpassing the others in both quality and quantity of fishing.
The National Park Service rated the Black Warrior's three forks in the top 2% of U.S. streams for "outstanding remarkable values."
Boating magazine called the Black Warrior River one of America's best kept secrets for recreational boating.
Alabama, "the River State," contains more miles of navigable waterways than any other state.
According to the Alabama Office of Water Resources, Alabama has more species of freshwater turtles than the rest of North America combined. (52% of the continent's species)
Most of Alabama's coal reserves are found in the Warrior Coal Basin.
The Black Warrior River is named after Chief Tushkalusa, also the namesake of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In Choctaw, tushka means "warrior" and lusa means "black."
The Black Warrior River was a major base of Mississippian culture, a.k.a. Moundbuilders, particularly in the area where Moundville Archaeological Park is now located on the border of Hale and Tuscaloosa Counties. Eight hundred years ago, Moundville was the largest city in North America. Learn more at http://moundville.ua.edu/home.htmlWhen Black Warrior Riverkeeper was founded in 2001, we were the 72nd autonomous chapter of Waterkeeper Alliance. Now there are more than 177 local Waterkeeper groups on 5 continents.
