Valley Forge Spring & Water Plant

Located 2 miles southeast of Hampton, the Valley Forge Spring discharges from one of the spurs of nearby Jenkins Mountain in the unincorporated community of Valley Forge. Encased in a concrete vault, the spring's outflow directly releases into the Doe River. Valley Forge became a part of the City Water System in 1968, following an engineering study that determined Elizabethton would need an additional 5 million gallons per day to meet future growth.
The initial plan was to build a costly surface treatment plant to pull water from the Watauga River, until city officials began a survey of the region and determined it would be far more cost effective to utilize a second ground source. A steadily flowing artesian spring, Valley Forge soon became the focus of the project. Tests were conducted to ensure that the source was not under the influence of surface water, and it was determined that the spring could reliably supply more than one million gallons per day. A 20,000 gallon concrete reservoir was built to capture the water, and a 12 inch pipe was installed under the Doe River to access the Valley Forge Pump station.
The spring was in full use by 1974 and today has the ability to produce 22% of the City's total water. A treatment plant was eventually built to handle the spring's yield of 1,600 gallons per minute, or 1.3 million gallons per day, and a new state of the art membrane filtration system was installed and in operation by September of 2008. The elevation of the spring is approximately 1,620 feet.