Flowing for roughly 300 miles, the Black Warrior River drains portions of seventeen counties in Alabama. The Black Warrior River watershed has over one million residents, contains 16,145.89 miles of mapped water, and covers 6,276 square miles.

The Black Warrior River's headwaters consist of the beautiful Sipsey, Mulberry, and Locust Forks. Once these rivers merge west of Birmingham, the Black Warrior River proper forms the border of Jefferson and Walker counties. Near Tuscaloosa, the river flows out of the rocky Cumberland Plateau and enters the sandy East Gulf Coastal Plain, forming the border of Greene and Hale counties in the Black Belt. At Demopolis the Black Warrior flows into the Tombigbee River towards Mobile Bay.

The Black Warrior River and its tributaries are a major source of drinking water for many cities including Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Cullman, Oneonta, and Jasper.

One of the Black Warrior’s three major tributaries (aka “Forks”) as well as the headwater of Smith Lake, the Sipsey Fork is Alabama's only federally designated Wild & Scenic River. Lear more at: http://www.rivers.gov/wsr-black-warrior.html. Its headwaters originate in the 24,922-acre Sipsey Wilderness within Bankhead National Forest. The Sipsey Wilderness was the first wilderness area created east of the Mississippi River, thus starting the Eastern wilderness movement. It remains the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi.

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.

According to Eastern Fly Fishing Magazine, the National Park Service rated the Black Warrior's three forks in the top 2% of U.S. streams for "outstandingly 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)

The Black Warrior River watershed is home to 127 freshwater fish species (3 of which are federally listed as endangered), 46 species of mussels (5 of which are federally listed as endangered), 15 turtle species (1 of which is federally listed as threatened), an endangered snail, and numerous other aquatic animals.

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.html

When Black Warrior Riverkeeper was founded in 2001, we were the 72nd autonomous chapter of Waterkeeper Alliance. Now there are 193 local Waterkeeper groups on 5 continents.