Talk:Eastern Continental Divide

Mount Mitchell is not on the Eastern Continental Divide.
Mount Mitchell is West of the ECD. All waters from Mount Mitchell drain into the Cane and South Toe Rivers. The South Toe flows into the North Toe which joins the Cane to form the Nolichucky River Which flows into the French Broad, which joins the Holston River to form the Tennessee River. By definition rivers do not cross Continental Divides, and by definition in order for Mount Mitchell to be on the ECD it must also drain to the Eastern Atlantic Coast, which it clearly does not. Mount Mitchell is a truly wonderful mountain, the highest in Eastern North America, but it is not on the Eastern Continental Divide. The highest point on the Eastern Continental Divide is Grandfather Mountain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Welkiner (talk • contribs) 11:26, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

French Broad River vs Broad River.
24.197.127.206 (talk) 03:01, 4 January 2017 (UTC)Hello, I believe the following text from the article conflates the French Broad with the Broad.

In section 'Locations', the box text for entry 'North Carolina/South Carolina: French Broad watershed' says: tributary of the Tennessee River along NC/SC border dividing mountain ridges running southeast meets Santee watershed flowing into Atlantic

The Broad flows to the Santee; the French Broad to the Tennessee.

24.197.127.206 (talk) 03:01, 4 January 2017 (UTC)


 * The entry is correct; the region in question is along SC's northwestern border, where a few slivers in SC between the ECD and the border are drained by the Little River tributary of the French Broard River of the Tennessee River. On the other side of the ECD immediately adjacent, the region is drained by the Broad River tributary of the Santee River. Sbalfour (talk) 20:37, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Lead
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Eastern_Continental_Divide&action=edit&section=2 One wouldn't know from the lead that the ECD isn't a line on the ground, like a highway stripe, or a fence, like those that demarcate western boundaries, or some arbitrary description like used in old deeds: "from ye' old oak tree to the bend in the river, thence to high rock knoll, etc...". What is it actually? I think we pretty much know what it does, but when one actually goes to look for it, what does one see? That's the only way we know where it is. It's a quite specific geophysical and hydrographic feature of the continent. That's what we weant to describe. Most of the lead is a map legend, and ought to be moved to the map; it's not geophysical description. Sbalfour (talk) 16:50, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

How about: The Eastern Continental Divide or Eastern Divide or Appalachian Divide in eastern North America is elevated terrain including the Appalachian Mountains, that defines the boundary between the Gulf of Mexico Watershed and Atlantic Seaboard Watershed.

or more elaborately,

The Eastern Continental Divide or Eastern Divide or Appalachian Divide is a hydrographic divide in eastern North America that nearly spans the United States north-south and consists of elevated terrain including the Appalachian Mountains, that defines the boundary between the Gulf of Mexico watershed to the west and Atlantic Seaboard watershed to the east.

Or, a bit more more info,

The Eastern Continental Divide or Eastern Divide or Appalachian Divide is a hydrographic divide in eastern North America that separates the easterly Atlantic Seaboard watershed from the westerly Gulf of Mexico watershed. The divide nearly spans the United States from south of Lake Ontario through the Florida peninsula, and consists of raised terrain including the Appalachian Mountains to the north, the southern Piedmont Plateau and lowland ridges in the Atlantic Coastal Plain to the south. It seems spurious to mention other divides in the definition of this one, when this definition does not depend on their existance or definition. Sbalfour (talk) 15:48, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Description
We shouldn't be using names of streets and highways to locate natural features. Even if we have wiki articles on the streets (which we don't always), I have to go look them up, intersect them in my mind (since no map shows both), then correlate that with some distance to something else. This was written by someone local, or who was there, and unless readers go there too, we want to mark locations with things we know, like mountains, major rivers, counties, lakes, state lines, etc. Sbalfour (talk) 20:16, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Sbalfour (talk) 02:19, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

The description drowns in detail then rambles on, omitting almost everything of significance. That would be, what state it's in, what the terrain looks like (mountains, swamp, woodland, etc), the elevation, anything nearby (city, national forest, state park, river, lake, etc), what direction it's heading from there, anything ecologically, geographically, hydrologically interesting there, what mile or distance we're at from the origin or some fixed point (i.e. if we're hiking, we want to know how far we are from some place we're going, or how far we've gone along the way). I could see a good paragraph per state (8) here, plus a paragraph each on interesting places. So 10-12 paragraphs. We've got a long way to go. Sbalfour (talk) 03:19, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

History
This section is trite; what’s the relevance? For an article lacking in meaningful flesh, this section seems like a trivial afterthought. I’ve deleted a couple of massive history footnotes; text here should be history of the boundary itself, how it was defined, moved by anthropogenic action, surveyed, etc. This hydrology article is not the place for Appalachian history; take that to the appropriate articles. Sbalfour (talk) 19:04, 11 February 2019 (UTC)