The Chickamauga Dam and its environs

and its environs
by robert sparks walker
The Chickamauga Dam and Lock
THE CHICKAMAUGA DAM AND ITS ENVIRONS BY ROBERT SPARKS WALKER
ANDREWS PRINTING COMPANY Chattanooga, Tennessee 1949
Copyright, 1949 by ROBERT SPARKS WALKER Price 50 Cents Companion Book: THIS IS CHATTANOOGA Price 75 Cents Printed and bound in the United States of America
The Chickamauga Dam
and Its Environs
Well, here we are, standing on the top of a huge pile of concrete 129 feet above the ground floor, about seven miles from the center of Chattanooga.
What a beautiful body of water it is that spreads before us to the east! It is a lovely creation. I think you will agree that its shoreline warrants its claim to as much beauty as the water itself. Really, I find it so inviting that I would like to join you in a hike all the way along its many little peninsulas, capes, inlets and tiny bays, halting long enough to see the loveliest wild flowers, vines, trees and birds, especially the waterfowls which have been attracted here chiefly because they find good fishing. Suppose we pause a moment and do a little figuring. If we should walk twenty miles each day, it would take us forty days to walk around the shoreline of this lake. On our way up the river, fifty-nine miles from here, we would walk directly into the Watts Bar Dam. There we would cross over to descend the east side of the Chickamauga Lake. While we were at Watts Bar Dam, surely some person would tell us that seventy-two miles farther upstream is the Fort Loudon Dam, whose waters back up as far as Knoxville, Tennessee, a city that is 650 miles from where the Tennessee empties into the Ohio. By the time we had walked back to our starting point, we would have trekked 810 miles.
If the water that is now passing by could talk so we could understand, some of it would tell us that it has come from storage dams that have been built on the tributaries of the Tennessee River. The dams thus reporting would be, Hiwassee, Norris, Fontana, Cherokee, Douglas, Ocoee, Apalachia and Chatuge. The TVA also has control of the water of the following five dams of the Aluminum Company of America: Calderwood, Cheoah, Glenville, Nantahala, and Santeetlah.