Up the Cumberland

This is a picture of the site of Fort Donelson which was the object of a large battle during the Civil War. Grant was in charge of the attacking forces that eventually forced the confederates holding the fort to retreat. It is on the Cumberland River on the way to Nashville which it was supposed to protect. We were impressed by the importance of rivers in those days as both routes for armies and barriers to their movements.
These Tennessee Valley Authority stacks (the taller ones) are over a thousand feet tall but are no longer used. The height was designed to put pollutants into the stratosphere where they would presumably be less troublesome. More recent technologies have made them obsolete. The shorter stacks have scrubbers that remove most of the offensive materials and result in little or no objectionable emissions.