Salt River (Kentucky)
| Salt River | |
|---|---|
Salt River watershed
|
|
| Country | United States |
| Basin features | |
| Main source |
Parksville, Kentucky 500 feet (152 m) |
| River mouth | Hardin County, Kentucky |
| Basin size |
Floyds Fork Rolling Fork Beech Fork Chaplin River |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Length | 150 miles (240 km) |
The Salt River is a 150-mile-long (240 km) river in the U.S. state of Kentucky that drains 2,920 square miles (7,600 km2). It begins near Parksville, Kentucky, rising from the north slope of Persimmon Knob south of KY 300 between Alum Springs and Wilsonville, and ends at the Ohio River near West Point. Taylorsville Lake is formed from the Salt River, and Guist Creek Lake is also in its drainage basin via Breshears Creek and Guist Creek.
Annual flooding swells the normally quiet waters to a rapidly flooding torrent. (See the Ohio River flood of 1937 at Louisville, for an example.) The Taylorsville Lake Dam, built in the early 1970s, has tamed the worst of the floods and changed the nature of the river downstream. Some flooding still occurs, especially near the Brashears Creek juncture at Taylorsville, but it is primarily back flow from the Ohio. The river receives the most rain in the month of May and the least in September per data from the local National Weather Service office.
The Salt River is a part of a Nature Conservancy because of several rare creatures and plants. The flood waters created rich bottom lands and support a variety of wetland habitats. Turtles, fish, waterfowl abound, deer, river otters and beaver are some of the typical animals living in the area. However some not so common animals live in the area like the Indiana bat, Gray bat, Fanshell, and Knob Creek Crawfish.
In addition to the animals, there are several rare or unique plants that live in the area. These include Carex crawei (Crawe's sedge), Cypripedium candidum (small white lady's-slipper), Leavenworthia exigua var. laciniata (glade cress), Sporobolus heterolepis (Prairie dropseed), Symphyotrichum pratense (silky aster), and Viola egglestonii (Eggleston's violet).
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