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With Jake Butcher he supported Blanton. His brother CH the other half of the two failures {the other was uninsured Southern Industrial Banking Corp} supported Alexander. They played both sides. By mid June 1982 it was obvious the Worlds Fair was a bust and some investors were going to loose big time as did some very foolish landlords and persons converting carports into apartments to rent at several hundred dollars a night. The Airstream camper parks about 5-6 with several hundred in each park all were empty from day one-closing.

The building of Norris was another matter. Norris Dam was originally basically built to get more electrical power into Knoxville. It's completion was 1936 IIRC. But with the dam came the town of Norris then hose of a number of TVA Offices. It was supposed to be the modern model city and it was federally owned to start out with. City of Norris {a high school, post office, store, and gas station, at that time} had electricity. The persons living along the main highway US 441 running from Norris Dam to Knoxville was not allowed power. TVA claimed it would spoil the scenic quality. I'm talking persons living a half mile out of Norris all the way to Knoxville. After WW2 a local vet began a campaign to get electricity ran up the highway into rural homes near Norris. He had to write congressmen and senators to accomplish it. Power was finally ran in the late 1940's early 1950's to those and other homes. You won't find that history anywhere it was one of my family members involved.

Norris Lake and the boundaries of it including several dikes upstream up stream of the main dam were Civilian Conservation Corps built. Perhaps that can explain the Nebraska senators big interest. Even the high school was named for him and the graduates called Senators. Senator Snipe hows that? LOL. Lot's of supply contracts including huge cans of food, tools, and other goods were purchased. Lot's of money changed hands.

Norris Dam four years later would become a huge local player in the Manhattan Project and also considered a big risk. It's about 20 miles upstream of modern day Oak Ridge.

The War Dept became concerned that an enemy spy could come in and put together an attack using a stolen plane out of Knoxville loaded with explosives and fly into the dam causing a major flood at Oak Ridge. There are old gun placement foundations below the dam for about 2 miles and about a mile downstream a tower and cable still stretch across the river. It was used by the Army to take a hand powered cart across the river to relieve the gunners on watch on the bluff.

FDR's New Deal propaganda in this region was built on a lie portraying very self sufficient people who had been in the region before the nations founding as backward stupid poverty stricken peasants.

If a person understands what they are looking for they can go into the places where TVA bought the communities up and find factories, schools, stores, gas stations, you name it. The Powell and Clinch Rivers were well established thriving communities. It was one of the main water routes and lead to within a few miles of the Cumberland Gap Trail. When the dam was built it cut off a large portion of those communities.

Don't get me wrong. Everyone welcomed electrical power and understood what it would take to bring it. It was how it was done and kept being done that brought wrath upon TVA.

The last straw for many was the Tellico Lake Project in the 1970's & 80's which they built just because they could. This was also the first court test of The Endangered Species Act. Nobody cared about the snail darter. It was used as a tool to bring a federal agency back into control. TVA for decades had abuses much like the EPA today. They wanted and they took. Why Baker and Duncan pushed the bill we'll likely never know. Up till then the dam project was dead. TVA had conceded it wasn't needed. I do know this though. That land became very high dollar communities and the original owners had land taken away that was not a part of the lake.