With the creation of the Park, their homes were gone, and so was Old Highway 288 the road to those communities. Hundreds of people were forced to leave the small Smoky Mountain communities that had been their homes for generations. Fontana Lake is actually a reservoir for Fontana Dam, which was built as a TVA project during World War II to produce electricity for ALCOA aluminum plants in Tennessee as well as for Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manhattan Project. In the 1930s and 1940s, Swain County gave up the majority of its private land to the Federal Government for the creation of Fontana Lake and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If you plan to walk through the tunnel you might want a flashlight and be aware horseback riders use the tunnel. Walking through the quarter-mile-long tunnel takes you to Goldmine Loop, Forney Creek (great trout fishing), Lakeshore Trail and other connecting trails. About a half-mile before the tunnel at the end of the road, you’ll find great hiking and trout fishing on the Noland Creek Trail. It provides an overlook of Fontana Lake and access to a number of hiking trails. Lakeview Drive is a beautiful drive or strenuous bike ride – particularly in the Fall. On the map, it is called Lakeview Drive, but to the citizens of Swain County it is “The Road to Nowhere - A Broken Promise.” But should that happen, there is always The Road to Nowhere, a scenic mountain highway that takes you six miles into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and ends at the mouth of a tunnel. A 2010 settlement by the NPS ($52 million paid to Swain County through the state treasury) officially ended the 1943 agreement when it was paid off in 2018.With so much to see and do in the Bryson City area, it is hard to imagine a day when you might have nowhere to go. After a renewed appropriation in 2001, the project ultimately stalled as the NPS found in a 2007 environmental impact study the area was too sensitive and fragile to complete the road. A locally-mounted legal effort failed in 1983 when courts ruled the Department of Interior was not bound to complete the project as Congress had not appropriated any new funds. After federal concern over the costs and environmental impact of the road, construction stopped in 1971 just shy of six miles into the project and after the completion of a tunnel and bridge. Construction languished, however, during and after the war, and by 1960, engineers encountered issues just two miles into the route as they found unstable rock layers. The agreement on the 30th specified that the National Park Service would take responsibility for roadway construction, while the TVA would pay Swain County $400,000 for the flooding of Highway 288. Delia Woodard Watkins, one of the displaced residents later recalled: “We all thought that the road was gonna be built….Nobody objected because they were gonna build the road and then the people could go back…to their cemeteries or their old home places.”īy July 1943, the TVA had already completed a short segment of the new roadway. The flooding of the existing Highway 288 and the National Park Service’s acquisition of approximately 44,000 acres along the north shore of the new Fontana Lake would require the construction of a new highway connecting Bryson City to Fontana Village. Over 1,300 families in the small towns and communities including Fontana, Bushnell, Forney, Judson, Proctor, and Hazel Creek would have to move. In early 1942, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) began construction of the Fontana Dam on the Little Tennessee River in order to generate electricity for the Alcoa aluminum facility in Tennessee. The federal commitment ultimately ended with much lingering consternation and a road never completed. On this day in WNC history: During a period of immense change and wartime sacrifices, a promise was made to residents of Swain County in 1943 to build a road around the new Fontana Lake.
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