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I only briefly passed through the area (after going by Clinton, to see the courthouse) back in the ‘90s. Reading in the article that the gubmint evicted the existing residents, it reminds me of how the heavy hand of the feds forced a lot of folks off their land. Oak Ridge, TVA, even locally near me, the Corps of Engineers creating Percy Priest Lake (named after a powerful Democrat Congressman from Nashville). That latter project dammed the Stones River and flooded a historic area that included the former Rutherford County seat of Jefferson which once vied to be the state capital (where both Andrew Jackson & future rival Thomas Hart Benton practiced law — the latter would leave the state and become one of Missouri’s most powerful political figures for decades), which I regarded as criminal.

So many of the folks evicted were poor farmers or people who’d occupied the land for years, a century or more. I think I mentioned that incident when Lamar! was Governor when they were celebrating the creation of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and he invited an old man up on stage, who promptly yelled at Alexander and everyone else, “You stole my land !”

My uncle's family on my dad's side was forced out of Oak Ridge. The town my Mom was born in Loyston is underwater. TVA impacted many more lives in that respect than D.O.D./D.O.E. did in Oak Ridge. But the most disgusting deed TVA did was Tellico Lake. Even by TVA's on admission the lake was not profitable nor really needed as several nuclear plants would be built. That is where the first court case of The Endangered Species Act occurred. It wasn't the fact anyone cared about a common Snail Darter. They were sick and tired of TVA running roughshod in this region.

The project for all practical purposes was dead until Howard Baker and John Duncan Sr pushed a bill through late at night to once again fund it.

The disgusting part came when the land was purchased from the original owners. Unlike other lakes where the owners only had to sell to full pool elevation plus a few feet on Tellico Lake it the parcel of land had an inch of it on the lake the entire parcel was taken by Eminent Domain for pennies on the dollar to what it would sell at lake front prices. The land went to developers. Tellico Lake flooded some of the most fertile and productive farm land in East Tennessee.

The upper Tennessee rivers were built as part of the Manhattan project and the war effort. Douglas, Cherokee, and FT Loudon were such. As well Alcoa had dams on the Little Tennessee up into North Carolina. Alcoa was also a huge part of the war effort.

The TVA though was created on a New Deal Propaganda and lie by FDR. He wrongfully portrayed this region as poor, uneducated people living on farms with with bad soil erosion. The damage the rivers did running at full generation stream to once fertile river bottoms far exceeded any floods that would have happened in 1000 years. The people living in this region had a strong self reliance and he flooded thriving towns and communities.

TVA also started a lot of the so called environmentalism. My grandparents lived close to Norris Dam the first built by TVA. Maybe 7 miles or so. The power was sent to Knoxville, Clinton, & Norris but my grandparents home was without electricity till the late 1940's early 50's because TVA said it would spoil the scenic beauty of the federal highway.

But there's more. Did you know TVA actually built a model city? Read about the history of Norris LOL you'll be shocked at the agenda of TVA even back then. It was built in the early 1930's at first to house workers for TVA at the dam. TVA chairman Arthur Morgan envisioned Norris as a model of cooperative, egalitarian living. The city design was developed by TVA staff