Building a Better Life for the Tennessee Valley

Unified Plan Helped TVA Transform the Valley

“It was a dark and stormy night….” 

That classic line has opened a thousand cornball novels. In the early 1930s in the Tennessee Valley, it was always the prelude to a real horror story.

The Tennessee River ran wild in those days, flooding regularly, damaging homes, businesses, farmland and lives.

The river was more or less non-navigable, even on the fairest of days, making it hard for people to get their goods to market. The river was filled with hazards, the most famous of which are the Muscle Shoals in Alabama.

Meanwhile, malaria plagued the region – three out of five people in north Alabama contracted it at some point in their lives.

Back then, only three in 100 people had electricity to light their lives and labors. Far fewer had running water. 

It was a hard life in the Tennessee Valley. The wild and raging river only made it harder.

A Better Way

But President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Senator George Norris had a vision for a better life for the people of the region, which they outlined in the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, passed in 1933. The act provided for flood control, electrification, navigation and the overall improvement of the quality of life.

That was the mission. The tactics would come later in the form of the Unified Development of the Tennessee River System, which outlined a plan for building hydroelectric dams that would allow TVA to:

• Control flooding
• Enable navigation throughout the Tennessee Valley watershed, including tributaries like the Clinch, Hiwassee and Little Tennessee rivers
• Generate electricity
• Reduce insect-borne diseases
• Create reservoirs for recreation
• Support soil conservation and resource management

The plan was approved in March 1936. 

When the TVA Act was passed, TVA had acquired Wilson Dam in North Alabama, and work began almost immediately on Norris Dam in east Tennessee. 

The plan established a roadmap for nine more dams that would transform the region into one that could enjoy a more stable, modern American lifestyle and attract economic development. Those dams included Wheeler, Pickwick, Guntersville, Chickamauga, Hiwassee, Watts Bar, Fort Loudoun, Fontana and Kentucky.

Expanding the Vision

World War II would again transform the Valley. Aluminum production increased throughout the region and work on nuclear weapons intensified at Oak Ridge National Laboratories in east Tennessee, prompting more dam building and additional electricity generation, including coal plants. Dams added to the plan during the war included Cherokee, Douglas, Ocoee No. 3 and Apalachia. 

At wartime peak in 1942, TVA had 12 hydroelectric projects under construction as well as a large steam plant.

As America converted back to peacetime in the 1950s, TVA’s unifying vision continued to expand. Several new dams were devoted to power production and flood control, including Watauga, South Holston, Boone and Fort Patrick Henry in upper east Tennessee, as well as Nottely Dam in north Georgia and Chatuge Dam in North Carolina. 

Some of these — such as Watauga and South Holston — had begun before WWII. But their power generation could not supply the massive energy needed for wartime, so construction was deferred until after the war so that much-needed manpower could be used elsewhere.

In the 1960s, TVA built Melton Hill Dam, the only tributary dam in the TVA system with a navigational lock. It also built Nickajack Dam below Chattanooga to replace the leaking Hales Bar Dam built by the Tennessee Electric Power Company in 1913. 

The 1970s saw the completion of Tims Ford, Normandy and Tellico – the last of TVA’s dam-building efforts.

A Unified Identity

By 1955, coal had surpassed hydroelectric as TVA’s primary source of power. However, while TVA moved into other forms of energy production, the river system continued to form its identity and even today marks the company as unique.

As it was planned in 1933 and implemented in 1936, TVA’s hydro system is both the backbone of the company and the linchpin that links the three areas of endeavor laid out in its mission – serving the people of the Valley region by providing energy, environmental stewardship and economic development.

In every essential way, the unified plan created TVA as it is today – and secured a safe, healthy and economically viable region for the 10 million residents of the Tennessee Valley. And today all our, “Once upon a times,” are more likely lead to happy memories and success stories because of it.