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Then and now
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Almost exactly 53 years ago, on Sept. 9, 1953 (top photo), work was proceeding on the crest of Nantahala Power & Light Co.’s Bear Creek Dam, one of four the power company built on the Tuckaseigee River’s East Fork in Jackson County’s Canada section. Construction of the 215-foot-high dam and 473-acre lake (lower photo) began in 1952, and the project was completed and generating power by 1954. Water is carried from the dam to the powerhouse below by a 1,400-foot system of tunnels and 8-foot-diameter pipe and produces a maximum of 8,200 kW. Bear Creek’s annual average generation is 31,036 MWh, which is enough to power 2,351 average homes for one year, according to Duke Energy figures. NP&L was acquired by Duke in 1988, and operational control of Bear Creek and the other East Fork projects was transferred to Charlotte in 2000. The power company spent some $8 million on the entire East Fork project, which includes – in addition to Bear Creek – Cedar Cliff, Wolf Creek and Tanassee Creek dams, lakes and powerhouses. While individually the dams are small as power installations go, collectively they increased NP&L’s capacity by 25 percent. All four were built across narrow gorges. Rock fill was used to construct the four dams, instead of the “prohibitively expensive” concrete construction that was the standard in the 1950s. John Archer, NP&L’s president at the time, told the Asheville Citizen-Times that the dams wouldn’t produce enough power to be economically feasible without some “radically new departures in engineering.” The main rock mass of the dams was faced with “impervious clay” on the upstream side and was expected to “show less deterioration over the years than would concrete,” Another innovative and cost-cutting feature was the remote-controlled operation of the new powerhouses from the always-manned Thorpe Plant. (Thorpe is no longer staffed around the clock, and control of its generation has also been moved to Charlotte.) Bear Creek Dam includes a “fuse plug,” (visible at right of main dam in lower photo) a section designed to fail in case of extreme high water and relieve the pressure on the main dam. – Duke Energy photo courtesy of Fred Alexander (top) and Herald photo by Nick Breedlove.
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