About ten miles northwest of Greenville, on the shared border of Greenville and Pickens counties, the North and South Saluda meet to form the main river. Both forks rise near the North Carolina line, near the town of Saluda, North Carolina, high in the Blue Ridge. The Middle Saluda, joining the South fork from the north, begins in Jones Gap State Park - a designated state scenic river, the first such designation in South Carolina. From this triple-source headwaters, the Saluda turns southeast and falls out of the mountains, through the Piedmont, on a long slow descent that ends only at sea level in the Atlantic, by way of the Santee.

The river is a workhorse, and the chain of dams along its length tells the story. The uppermost dam holds back Saluda Lake on the Greenville-Pickens line. Below that, old textile mill dams at Piedmont, Pelzer, and Ware Shoals mark the small mill towns that grew along the falls in the 19th century - cotton processed by workers, much of it powered by river water dropped through turbines. Greenwood Dam impounds Lake Greenwood. Furthest downstream, Dreher Shoals Dam was completed in 1930 to create Lake Murray - then the largest power reservoir in the world by volume - flooding 50,000 acres and submerging entire communities, churches, and graveyards behind its earthen wall.

Below Lake Murray the Saluda runs fast and cold, fed from the bottom of the deep reservoir. By the time it reaches Columbia it is a Class II and III trout river - unusual for South Carolina, possible only because of the dam upstream. Whitewater paddlers run the stretch under Interstate 26. A footbridge at Riverbanks Zoo carries visitors across the river between Richland and Lexington counties. Then, in the heart of downtown Columbia, the Saluda merges with the Broad - both rivers ending here, both names disappearing - to form the Congaree, which continues south through Congaree National Park toward the sea.

In April 2009, American Rivers placed the Saluda on its list of most endangered American rivers. Sewage discharges threatened the drinking water of more than half a million South Carolinians, the report warned, with excess phosphorus driving algae blooms that depleted oxygen and killed fish. A year earlier, a citizens' group based in Marietta in Greenville County had launched Save Our Saluda, vowing to protect the headwaters from aggressive development. The campaign continues. So does the work the river itself does, quietly - draining ten South Carolina counties, supplying drinking water and electricity, hosting paddlers and anglers, and emptying, in the end, into the Atlantic that all the eastern rivers eventually find.