Triumph and Tragedy

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Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division image

Triumph and Tragedy: Fontana Dam

The construction of Fontana Dam 80 years ago is a microcosm of the changes World War II brought to all of America.

Born in Georgia’s Blue Ridge mountains, the Little Tennessee River made its way north into North Carolina, where it traced a circuitous but unfettered path through the rugged Smokies’ landscape before entering Tennessee. Countless tributaries helped it gather strength and size before leaving the Tar Heel State for its eventual juncture with the larger Tennessee River and the ultimate mingling of its clear waters with those of the mighty, muddy Mississippi. 

Its name, in company with many direct or indirect feeders—such as the Nantahala, Tuckasegee, Cheoah, and Cullasaja rivers along with Cartoogechaye, Stecoah, and Ellijay creeks—is Cherokee in origin and reminds us of the area’s original inhabitants. Equally intriguing were descriptive or picturesque words of European origin chosen to name numerous other tributaries—Noland, Panther, Forney, Sweetwater, Chambers, Hazel, Eagle, and Twentymile creeks. Fed by these pure, fast-flowing streams born of ample rainfall and steep ridges, the strong-shouldered and fast-flowing Little Tennessee River gouged its way through gorges and rugged terrain with irresistible force. By the time it reached the Tennessee boundary line it was large enough to require Rymers Ferry for crossing, and on a map the stream and its myriad feeders looked like a delightful maze of laughter lines giving character to an old man’s face.

It was a stream flowing in a world mankind had only partly tamed. It coursed through what Alberta and Carson Brewer aptly styled a “Valley So Wild” in the title of their folk history of the river and those who lived in its rough embrace. Wild though it unquestionably was, the Little Tennessee and its bountiful environs had always attracted humans. Archaeologists tell us portions of the drainage are among the richest, in terms of remains left by Native Americans, to be found anywhere in North America. Yet much of the Little Tennessee, and that was particularly true of its middle reaches, was such steep, raw landscape it was ill suited for large-scale settlement. 

It was mostly a river marked by crossroads settlements, small villages, remote homesteads, and what many residents considered splendid isolation. There were, to be sure, places where people gathered to collect mail, in some instances could board a train, attended school, or otherwise interacted with one another.

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Triumph and Tragedy: Fontana Dam

The Little Tennessee river below Calhoun Island

Era of transition

Yet remoteness could not protect the region and its hardy residents from what, over the course of a short four decades, would prove to be unimaginable change. That era of transition, almost exactly matching the first 40 years of the twentieth century, culminated with the Tennessee Valley Authority building the massive Fontana Dam, construction of which began 80 years ago in 1942. For a host of considerations, including flood control, hydroelectric power, and America’s effort in World War II, the closing of its gates created a watershed which stopped the flow of the brawling river. Its massive electric generation powered Oak Ridge, the first and largest of the Manhattan Project sites built to produce the world’s first atomic weapons, as well as production of aluminum and other war materials.

Construction of Fontana inundated or isolated hundreds of homes and displaced entire communities. Its rising waters flooded fields and farms, railroads and residences, while backing up at full flood all the way to the outskirts of Bryson City, North Carolina.

Flooding 10,230 acres, it created a 30-mile long lake with 238 miles of shoreline. Tens of thousands of acres along its north shore feeder streams were incorporated into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Altogether 68,291 acres were taken. For many locals, the impact was not positive, as 1,311 families were displaced, 2,043 grave sites left isolated or removed and reinterred, and Graham and Swain counties lost a chunk of their tax base. 

The material costs—highway and railway relocation, lost timber resources, burned buildings, drowned or condemned agricultural acreage—took not only an economic but an emotional toll. Duane Oliver, who was a boy living on Hazel Creek at the time, captured some of the feeling in his book, Hazel Creek from Then to Now. “I recall standing on the graveyard hill in Possum Hollow and watching the Franklin store and warehouse being put to the torch by TVA.” While the TVA suggested that most of the structures burned to the ground were shacks, Oliver says many were actually impressive structures “built of magnificent lumber such as three by fourteen inch chestnut beams.” 

Decades later, people of the area still recoil at what they say was TVA’s treatment of those who stood in the way of progress. Again, Oliver described the situation in graphic terms. “TVA appraised the land, setting the price at the lowest level possible and allowing no bargaining.” In the end, some 1,064 tracts were acquired at an average sum of only $37.76 an acre. 

The settlement received by Cole Hyatt—one of a handful of landowners who fought TVA condemnation—for his 225-acre holding with two homes, was only enough to buy only 125 acres elsewhere. The human impact still evokes great passion among locals with deep roots in the area, and has to be troubling to objective students of Fontana’s creation. 

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Triumph and Tragedy: Fontana Dam

Fontana Dam construction as viewed from Highway 288

Gone in a glimmer

Dam construction added to the woes of those most affected. Over the span of three decades beginning at the dawn of the twentieth century, much of the region’s vast forest land had been logged. The process brought an economic boom, but it lasted scarcely more than a generation. By the time Pearl Harbor was bombed and America became a nation at war, the logging era was over and once vast expanses of forest were wasteland. 

No sooner had large-scale commercial logging ceased than the area saw the arrival of a virulent blight that killed the American chestnut. Treasured and venerated far above all others, that variety of tree supplied food for humans and livestock, offered a cash crop of roasted nuts, and provided acid wood for tanneries. The chestnut supported game populations, which were an important part of the high country diet, provided building materials of many types—shingles, furniture, fence rails, and boards for sheds and homes—and much more. It was gone in a glimmering, and so dramatic was the chestnut’s disappearance that national newspapers likened it to a plague or invasion by an enemy. 

Then came the Great Depression. While its impact was less devastating in the Smokies than elsewhere, it nonetheless destroyed banks—and bank deposits—and took an undoubted economic toll on many who had scrimped to save a bit as they eked out a hard life on steep ridges and in deep hollows.

All of these factors underlay the idea of building what would be, at 480 feet, the highest dam east of the Rockies. Before the war, Alcoa—the Aluminum Company of America—had already acquired thousands of acres of land along the river, with eventual dam construction in mind, but at the beginning of the 1940s those plans were nowhere near fruition. 

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Triumph and Tragedy: Fontana Dam

Unit 6 tool box

Helping the war effort

The urgent demands of a country suddenly at war brought TVA to the forefront. Alcoa had neither the fiscal nor human resources to proceed at the needed pace, so the Department of Defense and TVA entered the picture. Intensely patriotic, most folks living in the region to be flooded were initially either supportive of or at least compliant with government takeover. There was at least some awareness of the general process, thanks to Alcoa’s previous acquisition of lands. Almost ninety percent of the affected landowners would sell voluntarily, although many said they felt they had no real alternative.

Even those who were sufficiently affluent or determined, such as M.I.T. graduate Philip Rust, who owned 4,300 acres on Noland Creek and generated his own electricity, could not prevail against the governmental might. Rust and a handful of fellow landowners sued TVA, saying lands were being condemned even though it lay above the planned level of the lake. They won in Federal District Court and the Fourth Circuit Court, only to lose in the Supreme Court. 

Locals of all stripes found some temporary relief in the much-needed economic boom that came with the dam, as almost 4,000 workers were hired for the multi-faceted construction of Fontana. Many welcomed the opportunity to work for “cash money,” as the local vernacular put it. Still, many realized that construction of Fontana meant that nothing would ever be the same.

The blending of the good with the gut-wrenching lies at the heart of the Fontana project. There was loss of land and a way of life, offset by the satisfaction of knowing one was contributing to America’s war effort. The town of Fontana Village was built to house workers and their families, and it bustled with work and prosperity. However, those jobs vanished once the dam was completed. Fontana Village survived to become a quaint tourist destination offering relaxing remoteness, a stopping point along the Appalachian Trail, a marina, and varied recreational activities. 

Few residents in the impoundment area had access to electricity before the war, yet they didn’t benefit from what one would assume became a plentiful and nearby option. In fact, power generated by Fontana Dam has never gone to Swain or Graham counties, and none of the power provided by Fontana has ever been used anywhere in Western North Carolina. When the region did finally come to benefit from widespread electrification, it was through Nantahala Power and Light, a subsidiary of Alcoa. 

Public relations efforts connected with the takings of land had predicted a boating and fishing paradise, but that hasn’t really panned out. The lake does draw fishermen aplenty, although far more of the anglers are locals than deep-pocketed outsiders. 

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Triumph and Tragedy: Fontana Dam

The Elizabeth Welch home

A land of natural beauty

Then there is the road.

Highway 288 once served the north shore of Fontana, but after flooding, that area could be reached only by boat or on foot. The government had promised that a new road would be built to connect residents to their heritage and ancestors’ grave sites, but that was never completed.

After decades of dispute, the federal government finally agreed to pay $52 million to settle the claim for the road. With that, a long-festering outgrowth of Fontana’s construction began to heal. 

With all of the human suffering and heartache set aside, most in today’s world would agree that it is better to see this area, defined and bordered by Fontana’s deep, cold waters, as a land of pristine forest and natural beauty, unmarred by avenues of asphalt, steep slope construction, or tortured, manufacture landscapes.

The story of Fontana is a mixed tale of triumph and tragedy, sadness and gladness. For better or worse, the life of the hardy folks who called home this long stretch of the Little Tennessee drainage belongs to a world we have lost. Their lands now lie either beneath the water or in the bosom of the national park or Nantahala National Forests. The memories live only in vintage black-and-white photographs or dust-laden books.

Such is the price of progress. When seen in its broadest context, the story of Fontana is one that serves as a microcosm of the changes World War II brought to all of America. 

Jim Casada is a full-time freelance writer who grew up in Bryson City at the upper end of Fontana Lake.

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Swain TDA photo

Triumph and Tragedy: Fontana Dam

The Road to Nowhere.

More Reading On Fontana

There is considerable literature on Fontana, its history, folkways, and lore. Duane Oliver wrote multiple books on the region, with the most important ones being Hazel Creek Then and Now and People and Places Along the River (essentially a collection of photographs). TVA’s Technical Report No. 12, The Fontana Project, is the official government account of the building of the dam and flooding of the lake. Alberta and Carson Brewer’s Valley So Wild: A Folk History, is nicely written and in some ways the finest treatment of the subject, although it goes well beyond Fontana. Indeed, the work was contracted by TVA in connection with the controversial Tellico Dam Project, and predictably it skirts areas critical to the underwriting agency. Lance Holland’s Fontana: A Pocket History of Appalachia, ranges widely, but Chapters 10 through 13 focus specifically on the building, societal impact, and general nature of Fontana and the village created when it was being constructed. Lucille Boyden’s short little book, The Village of Five Lives, focuses specifically on Fontana Village. There are also chapters covering fishing in Fontana and its feeder streams from Jim Gasque’s Hunting & Fishing in the Great Smokies, published just a few years after the lake’s creation, as well as in modern works such as this writer’s Fly Fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For an intriguing and revealing look at how one extended community was impacted by both Fontana and the Park, Dan Pierce’s Hazel Creek: The Life and Death of an Iconic Mountain Community, is first-rate.