Where is the Tug Fork Watershed?

Tug Fork is a river in central Appalachia. It begins in southern West Virginia, very close to the Virginia border as two distinct rivers, one starting in Vallscreek and the other starting in Jenkinjones before they join together in laeger. All three of these communities are in McDowell County. As the river flows northwest, it briefly forms the westernmost section of the West Virginia and Virginia border. Then, it makes up the entire border of West Virginia and Kentucky - although in Louisa, KY/ Fort Gay, WV Tug Fork joins with Levisa Fork to form the Big Sandy River. The Big Sandy, then, serves as the border between West Virginia and Kentucky the rest of the way north to the Ohio border - the Ohio River. Thus, the waters of Tug Fork eventually flow into the Mississippi River watershed and the Gulf of Mexico. 

The US Geological Survey (USGS) Watershed Finder assigns Tug Fork watershed the hydrologic unit code (HUC) 05070201, meaning the Tug Fork watershed is inside of the Big Sandy watershed, inside of the Big Sandy-Guyandotte watershed, which lies inside the Ohio River watershed. See the map below from USGS of the Tug Fork watershed. Note McDowell County in the southwest corner of the watershed, then see how the watershed follows up the western West Virginia border. 

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) refers to a smaller section of the Tug Fork watershed as the Elkhorn Creek/Tug Fork watershed. In the photo below from the USDA, the blue line is Elkhorn Creek and the purple is Tug Fork, with the blue shading being the watershed of interest.

I plan to focus my efforts on the southwestern part of the Tug Fork watershed as defined by USGS and the Tug Fork part of the Elkhorn Creek/Tug Fork watershed defined by the USDA.  That is, my watershed of study will be completely incapsulated by McDowell County, WV.