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Crane working on the dam removal on the Chattahoochee in August 2012
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The river woke up How two old dams became Class V.

For nearly two centuries, the falls of the Chattahoochee at Columbus powered cotton mills and sat buried under millponds. Then the city decided to let the river run again.

Photo: WhitewaterColumbus.com, August 2012. Dam removal in progress.

Updated

Quick answer

Columbus, GA and Phenix City, AL removed two old textile-mill dams on the Chattahoochee, City Mills and Eagle & Phenix, in 2012 and 2013. The roughly $26 million project restored about 2.5 miles of natural rapids buried for well over a century, creating the world's longest urban whitewater course. Commercial rafting began in 2013.

The Chattahoochee drops steeply as it crosses the fall line between Georgia's Piedmont and the coastal plain. That drop is why Columbus exists: in the 1800s, water power from these falls turned the city into one of the South's biggest textile centers.

Mills, dams and a buried river

Mill owners built low dams across the river to feed their water wheels and turbines. City Mills, first dammed in 1828 and rebuilt in 1907, backed up about 1.3 miles of river. Downstream, the Eagle & Phenix Dam, built in 1882 to power the Eagle & Phenix textile mill, flooded the rest. The rapids that once roared through town disappeared under flat, slow water.

As the mills closed through the 20th century, the dams stopped doing much of anything. The rapids were still there, just underwater.

Breaching the dams

In the 2000s, Uptown Columbus, the W.C. Bradley Company, the City of Columbus, Phenix City, Georgia Power and state and federal agencies pushed a plan to remove the old dams and restore the river for recreation and ecology. The project cost about $26 million.

Crews began breaching the dams in 2012 and finished in 2013 (City Mills came down on March 12, 2013). Along the way they installed a 60-foot-wide Waveshaper with movable, wing-shaped vanes to sculpt waves. The whitewater course opened to commercial rafting in 2013.

Visitors rafting in the first year: about 16,000. The next year: nearly 25,000. By 2021: about 50,000 a year.

What happened next

The river became an engine for Uptown. Hundreds of millions of dollars in property investment followed, new hotels opened, and the course, now branded RushSouth Whitewater Park, started hosting national and world events. Columbus hosted U.S. freestyle kayak nationals in 2017 and 2018, a World Cup in 2022, and the ICF Freestyle Kayak World Championships in 2023, and it is slated to host the World Championships again in 2029. In 2025 the International Canoe Federation named it the world's first Center of Excellence for canoe freestyle.

Wildlife came back too. Herons and ospreys hunt the rocky shallows, and turtles and fish are easy to spot from the RiverWalk. Biologists are still watching closely: the native shoal bass, a species found only in this river system, has not rebounded the way many hoped, a reminder that restoration is a long game.

Sources

Two states, one riverThe Chattahoochee forms the Georgia-Alabama state line here, so the course is shared by Columbus and Phenix City. You can raft between the states and zipline across them.
From our archive

August 2012: the river mid-transformation

We photographed the Columbus riverfront in August 2012, while crews and cranes were still working the dam sites. The rapids were already starting to show.

Dam removal work site on the Columbus riverfront in 2012
Dam removal work on the Columbus riverfront.
Heavy equipment on the exposed riverbed during the 2012 dam removal
Heavy equipment on the exposed riverbed.
Remnant of the old dam in the river below the Columbus mills
A stone remnant of the old dam below the mills.
Rapids below the mills in 2012 while the dam removal was underway
New rapids forming below the mills, crane still on site.
Historic brick powerhouse beside the Chattahoochee
The historic brick powerhouse beside the river.
A river turtle swimming in the clear shallows of the Chattahoochee
A turtle in the clear shallows, one of many we spotted.

All photos in this section: WhitewaterColumbus.com, August 2012.

See it from the water

Photos do not do it justice. The best way to understand what Columbus did is to paddle through it.

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