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.
What do you really see here? Briefly, there are a navigation lock
60 by 360 feet, a concrete spillway, a concrete powerhouse intake
section, a concrete bulkhead section, and an earth embankment on each
side. It calls for a long stretch of the legs to walk from one end
to the other. The spillway section which includes eighteen piers, is
864 feet long. The eighteen gates are forty feet wide and forty feet
high. The earth embankment to our left on the north side, is 1,390
feet in length; the embankment on our right, or south side, is 3,000
feet long. The total length is approximately 5,800 feet or a little
more than a mile.
The spillway section has a width of eighty-two feet at its base.
Including the apron, its width increases to a hundred and twenty-five
feet. The power station with its three units has a generating
capacity of 81,000 kilowatts. There are three hydraulic turbines, and
one more can be added.
The Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933, passed by Congress,
gave power to the board to construct dams in the Tennessee River.
Accordingly, the TVA began work on the Chickamauga Dam, January
13, 1936. The project was finished January 31, 1941, or five years
after the work was started. The filling of the reservoir was begun
January 15, 1940. In that time 2,510,800 cubic yards of earth were
handled and 491,800 cubic yards of concrete poured. The total cost of
constructing the Chickamauga Dam, including the cost of acquiring all
the lands, totaled thirty-eight million dollars.
It is well to remember that the water shed of the Tennessee River
embraces 40,910 square miles. Believe it or not, about half of that
area is found above the Chickamauga Dam. This upper basin has an
average rainfall of 50.8 inches.