The name is Siouan and the meaning is gone. Yadkin comes from Yattken or Yattkin, a word from a language the Cheraw and the Saura spoke before disease and removal silenced them. Linguists guess it may have meant big tree or place of big trees - guess being the operative word. Whatever it meant, it still names the river, and the river still flows. It rises 215 miles upstream near the Blue Ridge Parkway's Thunder Hill Overlook in Caldwell County, gathers seven reservoirs' worth of dammed water on its way south, and finally changes its name to the Pee Dee at the confluence of the Uwharrie south of Badin. Then it runs into South Carolina at Cheraw, hits the Fall Line, and goes to the Atlantic.
Damming the Yadkin started early and never quite stopped. From upstream down: W. Kerr Scott Reservoir at the head, then High Rock Lake, Tuckertown, Badin Lake, Falls Reservoir, Lake Tillery, and Blewitt Falls. Every reservoir except W. Kerr Scott generates hydroelectric power. For most of the twentieth century the four middle dams - High Rock, Tuckertown, Badin, and Falls - were owned and operated by Alcoa under federal license, generating electricity to power the company's huge aluminum smelter at Badin. The plant shut down in 2007. The federal license expired in 2008. Then came years of fighting: Governor Bev Perdue and other North Carolina officials wanted the state to take the water rights back, arguing that a company no longer smelting aluminum shouldn't keep the dams. They lost. On September 22, 2016, Alcoa got a new federal license good through March 31, 2055. The license now belongs to Cube Hydro Carolinas, which bought the operation. The lakes remain. So do the arguments.
The upper river is high and fast, a Blue Ridge stream falling out of Caldwell County through Wilkes and Yadkin Counties past Wilkesboro. Then it loops through the Piedmont, past Winston-Salem (Forsyth County), through Davie and Davidson Counties, picking up the Reddies, Roaring, Mitchell, Fisher, Ararat, and South Yadkin Rivers along the way. The 1985 General Assembly designated 163 miles of it the Yadkin River State Trail - a paddle trail with launch points and primitive campsites. Pilot Mountain State Park rises just north of where the river crosses into Yadkin and Surry Counties. Morrow Mountain State Park and the Uwharrie National Forest line the banks where the river starts becoming the Pee Dee. Most of the fishing is for sunfish, catfish, largemouth bass, and white bass in spring and early summer. The canoes and rafts work the middle stretches.
Rivers in North Carolina have always been contested property. In 1859 the state Supreme Court issued an opinion noting that the Yadkin was capable of private ownership and that parts of its bed had been granted to private individuals. The court ruled the owners of a dam on the river could not have their property taken without just compensation. That principle - that the river itself can belong to someone - is one strand of the legal thread that runs all the way to the Alcoa relicensing fight 150 years later. In the 1980s the Mitchell River, a Yadkin tributary, was nearly ruined by sediment runoff from a development called Olde Beau. The state EPA cited the developer, Earl Slick, repeatedly. The development proceeded anyway. The Mitchell took years to recover. Drought years bring out the old fights again - water from the Yadkin-Pee Dee supplies communities in both Carolinas, and when there isn't enough to go around, the division gets contentious in a hurry.
Near the town of Spencer in Rowan County, the river runs over a shallow stretch the Native peoples and early colonists called the Trading Ford - a natural crossing where the Trading Path from Virginia to the Catawba villages forded the Yadkin. The Yadkin River Bridges that now cross there carry I-85 traffic across the spot where Daniel Boone, Cornwallis's army, and thousands of unnamed travelers waded over. Just downstream of the modern bridges, the Wil-Cox Bridge - a 1922 concrete arch span - has been preserved as a pedestrian crossing. Below the Wil-Cox the river enters High Rock Lake, the largest of the Yadkin reservoirs. The name we kept came from a language we lost. The dams that carved up the river were built for an aluminum smelter that is gone. The trading paths that crossed it have become interstates. The river keeps flowing south, changes its name to Pee Dee at the Uwharrie, and goes to the sea.
The Yadkin River runs 215 miles through northwestern and central North Carolina from its headwaters near 36.16 degrees N, 81.78 degrees W (Thunder Hill Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway) southeast to its confluence with the Uwharrie at roughly 35.32 degrees N, 80.06 degrees W. Coordinates of mid-river point near High Rock Lake: 35.38 degrees N, 80.06 degrees W. The chain of seven reservoirs is the most prominent feature visible from the air - especially High Rock and Badin, which are large enough to serve as visual reference points. Nearest airports for the middle reaches: Statesville Regional (KSVH); Smith Reynolds (KINT); Concord-Padgett (KJQF). For the upper river near Wilkesboro: North Wilkesboro (KUKF). Recommended viewing altitude 3,500-6,500 feet AGL depending on the reach. Watch for the Yadkin River Bridges at I-85 (Trading Ford) and the Wil-Cox Bridge just upstream.