Mohawk

Course

The river's source is at the confluence of the West Branch Mohawk River and East Branch Mohawk River in north-central Oneida County. It begins flowing generally southeastward towards the Hamlet of Hillside, first receiving Blue Brook then McMullen Brook and Haynes Brook. In Hillside is the confluence of Lansing Kill, after which it flows towards the Hamlet of North Western receiving Stringer Brook along the way. After North Western it receives Tannery Brook then Wells Creek in the Hamlet of Frenchville. At Frenchville it curves to the southwest and heads toward the Hamlet of Westernville receiving Deans Gulf along the way. In Westernville it enters Delta Reservoir.

History

The river has long been important to transportation and migration to the west as a passage through the Appalachian Mountains, between the Catskill Mountains and Allegheny Plateau to the south and the Adirondack Mountains to the north. The Mohawk Valley allowed easier passage than going over the mountains to the north or south of the valley. As a result, it was strategically important during the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War, and a number of important battles were fought here. The fertile Mohawk Valley also attracted early settlers.

The river was the highway of the native Mohawk people. The Mohawk name for the river is Teionontatátie, "a river flowing through a mountain" (or Yeionontatátie, "going round a mountain").

Geology

The Mohawk watershed drains a large section of the Catskill Mountains, the Mohawk Valley proper, and a section of the southern Adirondack Mountains. All three regions have distinct bedrock geology, and the underlying rocks become progressively younger to the south. Overall, this part of New York is represented by lower Paleozoic sedimentary rocks that unconformably overlie the Grenville-aged (Proterozoic, here about 1.1 billion years old) metamorphic rocks of the Adirondacks. In the watershed, these rocks are only significant in the headwaters of the West Canada Creek. Much of the main trunk of the Mohawk River sits in Cambro-Ordovician carbonates (limestone) and Middle Ordovician sandstones and shales.