Тыгарт өзені: Батыс Вирджинияның географиясы және тарихы

The Tygart Valley River — also known as the Tygart River — is a principal tributary of the Monongahela River, approximately 135 mile (217 km) long, in east central West Virginia in the United States. Via the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, draining an area of 1,329 square miles (3,442 km2) in the Allegheny Mountains and the unglaciated portion of the Allegheny Plateau.

The Tygart Valley River rises in the Allegheny Mountains in Pocahontas County and flows generally north northwestwardly through Randolph, Barbour, Taylor and Marion counties, past the towns of Huttonsville, Mill Creek, Beverly, Elkins, Junior, Belington, Philippi, Arden, and Grafton, to Fairmont, where it joins the West Fork River to form the Monongahela River. (The Tygart is thus the "East Fork" of the Monongahela.) Downstream of Elkins, the Tygart passes through a gap between Rich Mountain and Laurel Mountain, which are considered to be part of the westernmost ridge of the Allegheny Mountains and the boundary between the Alleghenies and the Allegheny Plateau. Along its course the river collects Leading Creek at Elkins; the Middle Fork River and the Buckhannon River (its largest tributary) Valley Falls State Park is along the river between Grafton and Fairmont.

At its mouth, the river has an estimated mean annual flow volume of
At an upstream gauge near the community of Dailey in Randolph County, the annual mean flow of the river between 1915 and 2005 was 358 ft3/s (10 m3/s). The highest recorded flow during the period was 19,900 ft3/s (564 m3/s) on May 17, 1996. Readings of zero were recorded for several months during autumn of the years 1930 and 1953. The brothers John and Samuel Pringle, who had taken up residence along the Buckhannon tributary of the Tygart (in present Upshur County) in 1761, acted as their contemporary Daniel Boone was doing in Kentucky and guided numerous immigrant settlers into the main valley of the Tygart which at that time abounded in game and fertile bottomlands. Settlers of the 1770s and '80s included the Connelly, Hadden, Jackson, Nelson, Riffle, Stalnaker, Warwick, Westfall, Whiteman and Wilson families. (One settler, John Jackson [1715–1801] from County Londonderry, Ireland, was great grandfather to Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.) Several minor actions occurred in the Valley during the American Civil War, including the Battle of Philippi, the Battle of Laurel Hill and the Battle of Cheat Mountain, all in 1861.