This small section, still there today, is about seven miles long and ends abruptly at a quarter-mile tunnel in the park, in the middle of nowhere. The people were moved, the water rose, and by the 1970s-30 years after the original agreement was made-only a small portion of the road was built. The road was to be cut through the newly created Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was intended not only to allow people to make the journey but to provide ongoing access to their ancestral lands and cemeteries.
To assuage those being displaced, part of the dam deal was to build a road from Bryson City to Deals Gap along a route north of the river. Where there had previously been small towns, villages, and homesteads along the north side of the river, there was now Fontana Lake, and the people who lived and worked there were either bought out or moved off. The people that did not benefit were the flooded-out communities along the banks of the rising water. War Department, the aluminum company stood to benefit from all that hydroelectric power coming in. The United States’ entry into World War II meant a huge spike in the demand for aluminum for aircraft, ships, and munitions, so a deal was struck for the TVA to build the dam with ALCOA as the primary consumer. It was a long and winding road to getting the dam built, and what was lost during the journey can be seen in the nearby “Road to Nowhere.”įontana Dam was built in 1941, on land given over to the Tennessee Valley Authority by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). The Fontana Dam, rising high above the Little Tennessee River in western North Carolina, is the tallest dam in the eastern United States.
0 kommentar(er)
