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This article is about the Piney River of East Tennessee. For information about the Piney River of Middle Tennessee, see Piney River (Middle Tennessee).
The Piney River drains a portion of East Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau generally referred to in the area as Waldens Ridge. It rises near the Rhea County - Bledsoe County line and is referred to in its upper reaches, roughly until its confluence with Bumbee Creek, as Piney Creek. Its major tributary, Little Piney Creek, flows over two spectacular but largely inaccessible waterfalls near the community of Grandview which are located in a State Natural Area. The confluence of the two streams occurs below the falls of the smaller stream in an area referred to as "Shut-in Gap". The stream flows out of the gap and is bridged by Tennessee Highway 68 just before that road begins its steep climb up the Cumberland Escarpment onto Waldens Ridge. The stream flows just north of the town of Spring City, Tennessee and just east of that town becomes slack as an embayment of Watts Bar Lake, an empoundment of the Tennessee River caused by the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Dam project. The mouth of the Piney is one of the larger embayments of Watts Bar Lake, and contains several small, but scenic, islands.
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