Ruralite Cafe: Published 06/06/02

By Lynn Hotaling - Associate Editor

Four dams harness river's east fork

Though Jackson County has no natural lakes, we do have a number of man-made reservoirs for summer fishing, boating and water sports.

Our lakes, which number six and were all built by Nantahala Power and Light Co. (now Duke Power's Nantahala Area) to supply power to the Aluminum Co. of America, range in size from Lake Glenville near Cashiers to the tiny Tuckasegee reservoir near the Thorpe Plant on N.C. 107.

The other four, all located in Canada community on the Tuckaseigee River's East Fork, were built in series utilizing what was at the time innovative engineering.

Learning the story behind the mid-20th-century construction of Cedar Cliff, Bear Creek, Wolf Creek and Tanassee Creek lakes was an adventure in itself. My journey through the microfilm reels on my way to the Sunday, June 19, 1955, edition of The Asheville Citizen-Times was brightened by interesting tidbits and eye-catching photos - but we'll save that information for another column.

This week's subject is the massive engineering and construction project that harnessed the energy of the Tuckaseigee's east fork.

Asheville Citizen writer Phil Clark explained that the four dams were built one at a time, starting with the lowest, Cedar Cliff (1952), and continuing upstream to Bear Creek (1954) and finally to Wolf Creek and Tanassee Creek, which share a powerhouse and began operations in May 1955.

The power company spent some $8 million on the project. While individually the dams are small as power installations go, collectively they increased NP&L's capacity by 25 percent, the story said.

All four were built across narrow gorges. Bear Creek's dam is the highest at 230 feet, and Tanassee Creek's is the lowest at 80 feet. Wolf Creek's dam is 140 feet tall, and the dam at Cedar Cliff is 175 feet high.

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 Citizen 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," according to the report.

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; several years ago NP&L consolidated operations and all the power generation in Jackson County is now controlled from Macon County.)

Each of the dams includes a "fuse plug," a section at one side designed to fail in case of extreme high water and relieve the pressure on the main dam. The plugs are designed to withstand twice the highest stream flow ever recorded, according the 1955 newspaper report.

The Asheville Citizen story also offers a couple of interesting insights into how our region changed between 1930 and 1950. During that time the population in the NP&L service area grew by only about 400 people but the electricity consumption increased by 84 percent and the number of power company customers grew from 563 to 11,143.

NP&L's two largest power generating facilities, Jackson County's Thorpe and Macon County's Nantahala, were rushed to completion in response to the country's massive need for aluminum during World War II. The smaller East Fork project helped feed the domestic hunger for electricity as the U.S. economy grew after the war.

And, in seeking to satisfy the needs of its customers, NP&L built Canada community's four lakes, which were described by Clark in 1955 as "blue jewels along the swit waters of the Tuckaseigee River's east fork."

A trip up N.C. 281, which offers views of the scenic reservoirs encircled by summer's forest greenery, shows his description is as accurate today as it was some 47 years ago.

Back to Archive: 06/06/02.