Backcountry Folk of the Virginia Blue Ridge

The Shenandoah National Park displaced some 450 families from the northern reach of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. The Park meant the end of a generations-old way of life for the mountain folk, many of whom didn't want to leave. [numerous vintage photographs]

I don’t have as much problem with the government taking property for resevoirs. Not much choice if you want a large supply of water for public use.

I don't either but that wasn't why it was done here. {I live in the area Ohioman is talking about as has my family for many generations}. It wasn't even done in the name of power generation or water supply at first. FDR sold this region and the nation on TVA as an erosion & flood control program.

TVA has destroyed far more usable farm and industrial land than 1000 years of natural flooding on the Tennessee River and it's tributaries could ever have done. Despite all the hype Chattanooga still flooded as well. The upper stream Tennessee River feeder lakes like Norris, Douglas, Cherokee, and Fontana have up to a 50 foot draw down in the winter. The one positive came out of it all early on was several of these dams were used for The Manhattan Project. Norris and Fontana I know for certain were. They were not built origionally for that purpose though.

The land which these lakes flooded is left barren in the winter and is far worse than any of that so called inpoverished poor-land farms FDR tried so hard to make the rest of the nation believe was Appalachia. Appalachia in most places was a thriving and prospering area. Entire towns and communities were wiped out by TVA on the Clinch, Powell, French Broad, Holston, and Little Tennessee Rivers.

My grandparents lived about 5-7 miles from Norris Dam in the late 1940's-1950's on a federal hiway. TVA refused to allow our community electricity because as they put it doing so would destroy the view. Power poles would spoil the scenic quality is what my uncle was told.

There is a deep seated and well earned distrust in the region of the federal government especially the Tennessee Valley Authority. I've had a run in with them myself over Eminent Domain abuse a few years back on my own property and a transmission line. Yes they tried to run over and bully me. They also tried to cheat me out of right of way payment and valueable timber they almost took for free.

It bugs me though to take people’s land just so other people can walk around on it and learn about how the people who were kicked off the land used to live.

Look up the Tellico Dam/Tellico Lake Project. It is a prime example of just that. They smoothed it over with a local museum or two. By TVA's engineers own admissions Tellico Dam was not cost effective nor needed as nuclear power plants were being built at that time. A hand full of politicians one of them former US Senator Howard Baker-R-TN in a late night session snuck the bill through to get it built against citizens wishes.

Before Tellico Dam was built property owners were usually only forced to sell to the full pool level of the lake plus 20 feet I think. At Tellico Lake they forced them to sell all the land including what was going to be prime high dollar lake front property. If the parcel was 500 acres and one acre was under water TVA got the remaining 499 acres as well at Eminent Domain prices. Developers with political connections got the land from TVA for bargain prices and made Billions. The original land owners only got assessed value at the time of sale. This was some of the most historical land in the state not to mention furtile prime farm land.

Tellico Lake was also the first place the Endangered Species Act was used to try and stop construction. It was over a common stream snail darter. The real fight wasn't about a snail darter it was about accountability of a run away abusive and bullying government agency TVA. The snail darter was just a means to try and end the abuses TVA had wrought on this region since FDR and congress created it.

Indeed it was. Sorry I hi-jacked your thread but what TVA did at Tellico Dam needs shouted from the roof tops. John Duncan Sr {deceased congressman-R-TN} was in on it also with Baker.

For those of us who do genealogy very many look ups of our ancestors in this area we know and understand what was done over the region as a whole from the Cumberland's to the Smokies and the land in between. If FDR wanted to generate power fine he should have presented it as such. But making this region look like it was inhabited by a bunch of backwoods ignorant people was not the way nor the truth. The region survived due to the skills of it's people. Wars some not on many history books were fought against government here like The Battle of Coal Creek vs the Tennessee Milita and the locals won in short order :>}

BTW ever hear of the model town of socialism TVA helped try to create? Interesting history there also. Norris, Tennessee was first built to be such after the TVA workers building the dam moved out. It was to be the model town of the U.S. TVA really saved us from ourselves LOL.

Hijack away! It’s nice when a thread starts, whatever the reason — never know what I’ll learn next. Norris, TN — I’ll have to look into that.

What irony — those who suffered most from Fed projects in TN, it seems, were from the Unionist areas from the Civil War. No good deed goes unpunished. I suspect that the same things happened to them as happened to my NC Unionist folk — once the Jim Crow types took over because of Reconstruction (another wildly successful Federal program!) the Unionist areas were neglected, if not disadvantaged. Last in line for road paving, bridge repairs, you name it. Even in the late 60s, they didn’t have to mark certain county lines on the back roads in NC — the pavement would drop off from the “Confederate” county 3 or 4 inches as you entered the “Union” county, where the road turned into a collection of potholes filled with loose gravel.

So when it came time to run backwoods folks off their land, old loyalties notwithstanding, it was easy to portray them as poverty-stricken and backward — the state governments had been working on making them just that for decades.

In East Tenn it was a little hard to do that. The whole eastern half was considered pro-Union as such but there were also Mountain Rebels as they were called from all of them. Actually in Knoxville, Tn at the old National Cemetery there is a CSA Captain buried there. I saw the marker plenty of times. I worked there on contract for V.A. while going to school on the GI Bill.

My wifes family from the Smokies side of the valley was CSA including a West Point Grad General. My family along the Cumberlands was mainly Union from what I've found so far.

Somebody earlier was asking about apple tree's from the older Appalachian homesteads? I'm 52 and up till my teens we could go into areas where TVA had bought out communities and find them around abandoned old house sites. I can't think of any now though as you pointed out they reached their peak and died out as far as producing.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.