NEW RIVER, NILE TAKEN DOWN A NOTCH

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 16, 1993                   TAG: 9304160102
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium
NEW RIVER, NILE TAKEN DOWN A NOTCH
The claim that New River is the second-oldest river in the world does not hold water, a speaker at the 1993 New River Symposium said Thursday.
What's more, said John T. Morgan, professor of cultural geography at Emory & Henry College, he is not convinced that the Nile is the world's oldest river.
Morgan presented a paper he co-authored with Michael W. Mayfield, professor of geography at Appalachian State University, at the 1993 New River Symposium on Thursday.
He said he realized that those attending might be less than enthusiastic about the conclusions he and Mayfield had reached.
When they presented the same findings at a pop culture gathering last year in Louisville, Ky., "we became almost instant heretics."
"I was just interested in how the concept evolved," he said. "We have been condemned for seeking the truth."
He quoted from sources dating back as far as 1903 suggesting that the New River is indeed old.
But it was not until the 1970s, when some North Carolina and Virginia residents were trying to keep Appalachian Power Co. from building a hydroelectric dam on it, that it began being referred to as the oldest in the United States, North America and the Western Hemisphere, or second-oldest in the world.
"Its age has become an accepted `fact,' " he said, particularly as stated by members of Congress (including "that well-known geographic morphologist Jesse Helms") who were seeking ways to sidetrack the Apco project.
They finally managed to do so with a bill declaring 26.6 miles of it in North Carolina a "wild and scenic" river that could not be dammed.
The legislators, like the anti-dam groups they represented, would always say "according to geologists" or "it is said" before declaring the river's age.
None of the geologists themselves made such claims, Morgan said.
But the claim now appears in North Carolina tourism advertising in magazines like the Smithsonian, a wide range of books, advertising by the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance and in obligatory spiels by white-water rafting guides in West Virginia (although information at the rafting visitors' center indicates that might not be correct), Morgan said.
"In other words, created image has become reality," he said.
The age claim is based on the assumption that a river must be older than a mountain range it cuts through, which Morgan and Mayfield say is false.
Morgan said he thought the claim was made as a publicity gimmick by those who wanted to prevent the river from being spoiled by a dam.
"It would be fine with me if the New was the oldest river. That would be wonderful," he said.
But he will remain dubious until there are systematic studies to date the ages of various rivers - "and we have none of those."
The river originally was named the Woods River. Virginia historian Mary B. Kegley, who attended the symposium, said it got its current name when it was rediscovered by early explorers who thought they had found a new river.
Some sources have claimed it was named after a man called New, she said, but there are no historical records of any such person having been in the region when the renaming occurred.
As for the Nile being the world's oldest river, Morgan said, "I think the Nile is a complete crock. . . . Where do we get that?" he asked.
"Why is the Nile older than the Tennessee system, which [like the New River] also crosses the Appalachians?"

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB