To put this waterway into perspective, the Tennessee River is the fifth largest river system in the world. It is the largest tributary of the Ohio River which empties into the mighty Mississippi. These three, along with the Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas rivers, plus dozens of tributaries, form part of the Inland Waterway System of the United States. All told, it encompasses some 11,000 miles (17,700 km) of navigable waters.
The Tennessee River was once known as the Cherokee River, home to the Cherokee Nation, along its more easterly sections. The river was a prime navigation and transportation route for people and goods, first by native canoe and then by small barges and boats. But the river was riddled with natural hazards along its course, including floods and drought, swift currents, and rocky shoals. It was also the source of many species of tasty fish and host to over 100 species of mussels. From a historical perspective, the first major battles of the Civil War occurred along the banks of the Tennessee River in 1862.
In the late 1800s, the United States Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) produced plans to dam the Tennessee River in several places to produce electricity and improve navigation. In 1916, well into the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Defense Act authorizing the construction of a hydroelectric dam at Muscle Shoals, Alabama -- one of the worst navigation hazards on the river. This dam was to produce the hydro necessary to produce ammonium nitrates for ammunition for the war effort, and for fertilizer to improve agriculture.
By this time, this region of the United States had become one of the most poverty-stricken in the country. Subsistence farming had, by the time the Great Depression had set in during the late 1920s, destroyed much of the arable land. Crop failures were routine, and the once mighty forests were being depleted of timber. Average family income in the area was less than $1000 per year with some families trying to survive on as little as $100 per year. Malaria afflicted almost one third of the population.
Also by this time, the public was becoming more disenchanted with the monopolistic abuse of private power utility companies. To rectify this, incoming President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised public ownership of power utilities in his New Deal to help manage the ravages of the Depression. In an effort to help ameliorate the crippling poverty of the area, in the spring of 1933, he signed into law the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, thus creating the TVA.
The structure and functioning of the TVA was monumentally innovative for the time. Roosevelt’s ideas were brought into reality by Congress, which created an agency with government powers combined with the flexibility of private enterprise. The first tasks of this new agency were to create dams with reservoirs to control flooding, create hydroelectric power for the region, stimulate economic activity in the region, and as a number one priority improve and maintain a navigable waterway along the river’s length. All of these projects would provide decent-paying construction employment for the area.
Within a couple months of TVA’s creation, it began construction of its first dam in eastern Tennessee. The TVA hired experts in many fields to assist in developing economic stimulus throughout the Valley. They educated farmers in the use of fertilizers and the benefits of crop rotation. They introduced social programs and even public libraries. But the TVA was not always welcomed. All of its hydroelectric projects, which of course required damming of the river and the creation of reservoirs, caused thousands of homes and residents to either move or be flooded out.
The TVA had been accused of excessive use of eminent domain, the government’s right to expropriate private property and was said to be unwilling at times to compromise with property owners. Some were forced to sell through court orders while others were seemingly forced to sell at below market value. Apparently, a number of historic indigenous sites, early colonial-era settlements, and historic cemeteries related to both, were flooded out. In all, well over 100,000 residents of the Tennessee Valley were displaced. It is also claimed that any extra or left-over land that was confiscated but not used was not returned to the original owners, but instead turned over to developers.
So not everyone was delighted by the overwhelming magnitude of the development brought to the Valley by the TVA. By the time the United States entered the Second World War, TVA construction was at its peak, with twelve hydroelectric projects including dams, one steam plant underway, and 28,000 workers employed. The TVA was one of the first employers in the region to recognize trade unions, but like all others in the area during those times, it did not recognize racial or gender equality.
The war effort required massive quantities of electric power and TVA was called upon by the government to provide it. This power source invited power-hungry industry such as aluminum smelters, textile mills, and phosphorus production to establish facilities along the Tennessee River. Upwards of 3500 wood processing plants were established in the Valley, and the river was used as a critical wartime transport route for grain.
The Valley produced some 60% of the elemental phosphorus used in the making of munitions for the entire war effort. Later, the abundance of TVA power convinced the US Army to establish its uranium-enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to provide the uranium used by the Manhattan Project for the first atomic bombs.
By the end of World War Two, the main navigable waterway channel was completed and extended some 652 miles (1,050 km) via river, lakes, and reservoirs, past dams and through nine locks. These locks dropped the river over 500 feet in elevation from just above Knoxville, Tennessee, then downstream to where the Tennessee River joins the Ohio River at Paducah, Kentucky. The highest single lock on the river, and possibly the highest on the entire Great Loop route is the Wilson Lock at Mile 259 on the Tennessee River. It features an elevation change of 93 feet, or more than 28 metres. Channel depth is maintained by TVA to between nine and eleven feet.
Further north, the Cumberland River which flows through Nashville, has also been made navigable through a series of dams and locks constructed by USACE. The Cumberland starts in the Appalachian Mountains, flows southward from Kentucky into Tennessee, through Nashville, and then arches northward through Clarksville and back into Kentucky where it joins the Ohio River at Smithland, Kentucky, just north of Paducah where the Tennessee River joins the Ohio. Although the Cumberland River is 688 miles (1,107 km) long, almost the identical length of the Tennessee River, only about 380 miles (612 km) upstream from the Ohio River is navigable through four dams, locks, and reservoirs over to Celina, Tennessee.
On a personal note, the closest I have come to boating here is back in the late 1990s when for three years in a row I joined other boating journalists from around the world at the Outboard Marine Corporation (OMC) media days where all of its new boats from all of its associated companies were available for testing. It was held on gorgeous Percy Priest Lake, a landlocked lake formed by the 1968 damming of the Tennessee River tributary Stones River just minutes from downtown Nashville.
We were housed at the opulent Opryland Hotel on the outskirts of Nashville, one of the largest hotels in the world which featured its own indoor “downtown” shopping concourse, separate public radio and television stations, dozens of restaurants and bars, and clothing and souvenir stores. Most memorable was the Cajun-themed temperature and humidity controlled central atrium incorporating some 10,000 plants, plus a quarter-mile indoor river with flat boats to carry passengers. Stay there sometime if you get the opportunity when you are doing the Great Loop.
Today, you can join some 18,000 pleasure boats annually and even more commercial vessels in sharing this incredible Tennessee waterway system. If you find yourself on the Great Loop, take the jog up the Ohio River from the Mississippi and expand your boating horizons through some of the most spectacular scenery and boating pleasures by exploring both the Tennessee and Cumberland River systems. #culture #waterwayswelove
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