As World War II begins in Europe, three of four dams on the Hiwassee River are built for the national defense effort
TVA power helps make planes, munitions and A-bomb.
An area to be flooded is deemed best for ‘afforestation’.
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Murphy, N.C., Nov. 28, 2006 — The Tennessee Valley Authority’s records of building dams around Murphy are in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Southeast Region office in Morrow, Ga. I drove there and read many of them today. As you might imagine, these tell a lot about the history of the Hiwassee River Watershed.
Rob Richards is the courteous NARA archivist who had read my e-mail asking for the records of dams on the Hiwassee, and who was assigned to help me.
“I’ve been here for a few months,” Richards said, who relocated from Las Vegas. “The reason they brought me in is to put TVA in order, which it is not.
“I have found for you twenty-seven boxes marked Hiwassee Dam, and thirteen others marked either Nottely, Chatuge or Apalachia dams.”
These records now in acid-free folders at Morrow appear to have been undisturbed until now. The folders are pristine and don’t bear any smudges or fingerprints. During the day I spent with them, I wanted to know: Why are there 1,269,050 cubic yards of concrete and 3,899,700 cubic yards of earth-and rock-fill in the Hiwassee River?
Here is what I concluded: Until the threat of a world war loomed on the horizon, the 1936 Hiwassee Dam’s turbines turned with the clear purpose of achieving TVA’s lofty goals of that first decade. These were to provide jobs and turn on the lights, generating electricity to improve the lives of the people while also preventing flooding downstream.
However, I came to believe this isn’t true for the 1941-43 Nottely, Chatuge and Apalachia dams. The actual records of the engineers themselves describe how those three were built in a hurry to store more water for Hiwassee Dam. Nottely and Chatuge took only about eight months, Apalachia, which is cement concrete like Hiwassee, took longer.
Together these dams joined a giant system making power to help the U.S. defeat the Axis powers of Germany, Japan and Italy in the World War then starting up in Europe. Soon it would be formally entered by the U.S., after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Specifically, TVA power helped make warplanes, conventional munitions and the atomic bomb.
“The Nottely project is one of four Hiwassee Basin dams authorized by the Congress on July 16, 1941 as an emergency national defense measure,” an unnamed TVA manager wrote in “The Nottely Project on the Nottely River, a Preliminary Report, July 1941.”
He or she goes on to say: “The purpose is to make available the storage capacity of the reservoir in the shortest feasible period of time to provide power for the present National Defense system.”
TVA served two main customers. The first, Alcoa Aluminum Company of America, made aluminum for airplanes at its plant south of Knoxville. A second client was the euphemistically named Clinton Engineer Works. This ultimately massive plant was located near Clinton, Tenn., and became surrounded by the new town of Alcoa. The works were part of the Manhattan Project, the biggest secret of the war. Its aim was for the U.S. to beat Germany in creating an atomic bomb, and it did. Oak Ridge made the elements of nuclear-materials production. To know this, you don’t have to drive to Morrow. You can read about it in the article “TVA goes to war” on its web site.
A SWIFT RIVER FLOWING PAST UNAPPRECIATED FARMERS
The most important document I found in Morrow, Ga., is the 783-page hardcover book in Box 368. It’s no cliffhanger, and it certainly wasn’t written for mass readership. Its title is simply “Technical Report Number 5, Tennessee Valley Authority,” and the authors were anonymous engineers for TVA.
It states on page 19: “The four Hiwassee projects were operated initially for their best contribution to the World War II emergency.”
The only description I have been able to find of what the Hiwassee River was like before TVA began intense damming is on page 19 of “Technical Report #5.” Here it is:
“Throughout most of its length, the Hiwassee River was a swift mountain stream with rapids falling as much as 30 feet to the mile through the Hiwassee Gorge.”
Another interesting document at Morrow is one in which engineers appear to have tried to become sociologists. This is the Sept. 26, 1935 record entitled, “Confidential report, The proposed dam on the Hiwassee River, an evaluation of possible effects.” It is by G. Donald Hudson and Malcolm J. Proudfoot. After you read it, it’s easy to form the view that these men didn’t think much of Cherokee County, N.C. farmers.
“The area is characterized by a condition of social and economic maladjustment, which has reduced its agricultural production to a low-subsistence standard of living,” they wrote. “It is so low that the area as a whole may be considered as sub-marginal and best fitted for afforestation or any practical use other than agriculture.”
H. JERVY KELLY’S SOBERING TASK
An especially poignant document at Morrow is the Feb. 1941 report, “Cemetery relocations.” It is by H. Jervy Kelly, civil engineer. He must have been a diplomatic man to have been chosen for this work.
In the path of the future Hiwassee Lake, there were 21 cemeteries. They were: Rose, Fowler, Ogreeta, Hiwassee Baptist Church, John Timpson, Farmer, Hightower, Old Persimmon Creek, Montgomery, Thomas Payne, Martins, Grape Creek M.E. Church, Tom James, Asa James, James Carroll, Nottely River, Hartness, Davidson and Bates, McDonald, Clonts and Pleasant Grove cemeteries.
H. Jervy Kelly published careful plats for each in his report. These are painstaking one-page sketches depicting, row by row, where rested the dead of Cherokee County.
Kelly obtained permission from the State Board of Health to move dead bodies. He published a legal notice for 30 days in the Cherokee Scout newspaper warning that this was going to happen. When that period was over, he dug up and moved 462 graves. They went to 19 of what TVA termed re-internment cemeteries. As for the rest, Kelly reports matter-of-factly: “Agreements were reached for 109 graves to remain in their original location.”
In the path of the future Chatuge Lake, there were 20 cemeteries having 2,200 graves. Mentions of H. Jervy Kelly and plats detailing who is buried where now end. An unnamed engineer writes: “After identifying all possible graves and determining the wishes of the nearest relative that could be located, it was found necessary to move 581 graves in five cemeteries. They were removed to eight re-interment cemeteries.”
In the path of the future Nottely Lake, there were eight cemeteries with 86 graves. The breakneck pace at which dams now were rising and the expediency of the work, are readily apparent. Instead of a multi-page report such as H. Jervy Kelly wrote for future Hiwassee Lake, there is only one morbid, anonymous paragraph for Nottely Lake, and it states:
“Three small cemeteries were below elevation 1,785, five feet above the top of the spillway flashboard. After all possible grave identifications had been made and the next of kin had been contacted, it developed that only two removals would be required.”
Apalachia Dam is in remote far western Cherokee County and there were no graves in the path of its future lake, according to TVA.
MURPHY CONTRACTS WITH TVA TO SHORE UP THE SEWER
A 307-foot-high dam was nearing completion. Concrete cement in great quantities was being poured midstream of a river known to be “swift-moving.” The instant new lake would creep steadily eastward toward Murphy. It’s clear that at this point, probably in 1938, the townspeople demanded TVA do something to protect them.
The parties negotiated contract TV 39658 on March 10, 1939. Mayor J.B. Gray signed for Murphy, and General Manager John B. Blandfuel Jr. for TVA. This document is in Box 5-562 in Morrow. It’s not pretty, and it can be considered one of the types of harmful actions that public agencies took before the Clean Water Act was signed by President Nixon in 1972. On behalf of citizens, government agencies using tax money simply, in glib and perfunctory ways, agreed to pollute streams. TVA and Murphy made a contract that would affect the Hiwassee and Valley. This accord is for TVA to construct “sanitary sewers conveying domestic sewage of the town to said rivers.”
If fish could read, they would have cringed, more so as they read the last paragraph. This stipulates that Murphy’s new septic tank “shall be of conventional design, and shall be provided with sludge blowoff facilities discharging to the river.”
A POPLAR TREE IS SAVED, A RIVER GAINS AN OUTFALL
Three of the archival boxes have file after file of the copious daily progress reports of the detail-minded chief engineer of the Hiwassee Dam, F.L. Weiss. The first one that is available to researchers reflects his concern for trees, but not necessarily for water quality. Here is what Weiss’ 221 employees did on Oct. 8, 1936:
“Completed a rock wall around an 18-inch poplar and an adjoining group of trees on Road A; set the road’s slope stakes, and re-computed its alignment; computed the coordinates for the quarry road; excavated for bunkhouse two; graded a storage area in the rear of the construction and maintenance building; and plotted the outfall sewer location.”
The Dam Division employees that day included supervisors, shovel operators, shovel oilers, mechanics, carpenters, tractor operators, grader operators, compressor operators, drillers, truck drivers, a welder, a steel sharpener and a blacksmith. The Construction and Maintenance employees included supervisors, carpenters and laborers. There also were two eight-hour shifts in the quarry, and each included drillers, an oiler, truck drivers, a “tally man” and a mixer operator.
Boxes later, the record entitled “Last issue Hiwassee Dam Daily Progress Report,” is dated Saturday and Sunday, June 29-30, 1940. This is by O. Laargaard, construction engineer. I couldn’t find in any record of what happened to F.L. Weiss. Laargard reports:
“Commenced mass layoff of hourly men, transferred several hourly and annually rated men to other projects, and commenced interviews for prospective police officers; removed transformers from construction substation to new location in low-voltage switchyard; Medical Station continued routine and first-aid treatment; Safety Division performed routine inspections, and there were no lost-time accidents this week.”
FACTS ABOUT THE DAMS
Hiwassee is a concrete gravity dam at Hiwassee River Mile (HRM) 76 of the Hiwassee River. It is 307 feet high and 1,376 feet long. Work began July 15, 1936 and the dam was closed and the lake formed Feb. 8, 1940, three years and eight months later. It cost $21,107,000. In it there are 793,000 cubic yards of concrete. This was “the highest overflow concrete dam in the world,” according to a 1938 TVA document. “Overflow” appears to be the key word, for the 1936 Hoover Dam on the Arizona-Nevada border at 725 feet high more than doubles Hiwassee. California’s 1944 Shasta Dam is 602 feet high. TVA’s 1945 Fontana Dam at Robbinsville, N.C., is 480. My sources for dam math are World Book and the document, “Facts about major TVA dams,” which is in the TVA vertical file in the Nantahala Regional Library in Murphy.
HIWASSEE LAKE WAS the scene of a Naval Ordnance Laboratory Experimental Facilities during World War II. The sailors tested rockets by firing them along a cable and into a berm in the lake. The state had 131 naval facilities at 31 locations during the war, according to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
A CONCRETE GRAVITY dam is “an obstruction created across a river gorge using cement concrete to store water on the upstream side,” according to the Google dictionary.
Nottely is an earth-and rock-fill dam at Nottely River Mile 21. It is 184 feet high and 2,300 feet long. Work began July 17, 1941 and the dam was closed and the lake formed Jan. 24, 1942, seven months later. It cost $8,047,000. In it there are 1,552,300 cubic yards of earth and rock fill, and 17,700 cubic yards of concrete. The number of employees working to dam up the Hiwassee now swelled. “A peak of about 7,500 employees was reached in December 1941,” according to TVA. “Most drove long distances from their homes.” A colony of forty 12’ X 14’ tents went up in Murphy “between U.S. 19 and the Hiwassee River,” wrote TVA. Later 60 Farm Security Administration trailers were moved there from Boulder, Colo., where they had housed persons erecting the Boulder Dam, later renamed Hoover. At the Murphy tent and trailer village by the river, there were “toilet and bathing facilities in three separate 12’ X 40’ buildings.” I never found in any document in Morrow or in the regional libraries at Murphy and Young Harris any reference to any attempt to treat sewage before it entered the river.
TO WRITE ABOUT place names here is to be corrected sooner or later in some spelling that you use. I simply point out that the N. dam has the words “Nottely Dam” in large letters on its intake tower out in the middle of the lake, which you can view that while standing next to a Georgia road sign on the dam road that has the words “Nottley Dam.”
Chatuge is an earth-fill dam at HRM 122. It is 144 feet high and 2,850 feet long. Work began July 17, 1941 and the dam was closed and the lake formed Feb. 12, 1942, eight months later. It cost $9,504,000. In it there are 2,347,400 cubic yards of earth and rock fill, and 10,000 cubic yards of concrete.
Apalachia is a concrete gravity dam at HRM 66. It is 150 feet high and 1,308 feet long. Work began July 17, 1941 and the dam was closed and the lake formed Feb. 14, 1943, one year and eight months later. It cost $22,559,000. In it there are 448,350 cubic yards of concrete. This is a remote dam in a rugged area. “A pipeline and tunnel system carries water from the reservoir 8.3 miles downstream to the powerhouse to generate electricity,” according to TVA.
TVA IN NORTH CAROLINA
The TVA “state fact sheet” describes activities through Fiscal Year 2005. The authority “sold nearly 644 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to one municipal power company and three cooperatively owned power companies. They are the Murphy Power Board, Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corporation, Tri-State Electric Membership Corporation, and Mountain Electric Cooperative.
“The North Carolina counties served by distributors of TVA power are Avery, Burke, Cherokee, Clay and Watauga. TVA owns and operates Apalachia and Hiwassee in Cherokee County, Chatuge in Clay County and Fontana in Swain and Graham counties.” You can read this at www.tva.gov
To get an idea of the size of the federal government’s massive TVA historical archive, and to view a sampling – too few if you ask me – of 20 of the hundreds of thousands of photographs there, go to http://www.archives.gov/southeast/exhibit/5.php
Even in its altered state, the Hiwassee River and wide parts called lakes or reservoirs generate billions of dollars in wealth for homeowners, real estate salespersons, developers, contractors and boat manufacturers. The town at the heart of the watershed, Murphy, has a declining estimated July 2005 population of 1,565 and a median household income of $24,952, according to www.city-data.com. Yet Murphy has four banks, soon to be six.
Tom Bennett of the Martins Creek community near Murphy, N.C., was a retired newsman, Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition member/volunteer/donor and recipient of the 2015 Holman Water Quality Stewardship Award. Tom died on December 28, 2020.