I have been looking through landform descriptions - that won’t come as any surprise after yesterday’s unfinished post - and I ran across the word “thalweg,” which has its uses.

The thalweg (tall veg, with a hard g) is the deepest part of a channel, usually a waterway, although it can be a valley not covered by water.

I suppose even Goulding Creek has a thalweg. It’s there, below, just off the far bank. It’s deepest there, if only by a few inches, because the creek runs fastest around the outer orbit of the curve.



Creeks or rivers or streams are often used as convenient property boundaries. The thalweg is then often used as the more defined boundary line (especially in a broad river - here, it’s not that important). I suppose making the common boundary the deepest part of a channel makes sense if that’s the only navigable part of a river, say, between two states.

Our own surveyor’s plat had the abbreviation MOTC along the Goulding Creek property line. It took me awhile to figure out that it meant “middle of the creek” (or channel, or stream, MOTS). Goulding Creek is not navigable, except for paper boats, so I don’t guess we need to use the thalweg.

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