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. In 2018, the last payment was made in the settlement the funds are held by the state of North Carolina and Swain County receives interest on the settlement money.Īs for the road itself, it will remain as it is now: going nowhere.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. As of 2016 only $12 million had been paid, and the county filed a lawsuit for the remainder of the promised money. Department of Interior agreed to pay a consolation prize of $52 million to Swain County in lieu of building the road. The road sat unfinished for decades, and finally, the U.S. The only solution was to stop construction. The rock had the potential to turn runoff acidic, threatening wildlife in nearby streams. The road was never finished due to environmental concerns: someone noticed that snowflakes melted unusually quickly on the newly exposed rock, as well as a strong smell of sulfur. This small section, still there today, is about seven miles long and ends abruptly at a quarter-mile tunnel in the park, in the middle of nowhere. The people were moved, the water rose, and by the 1970s-30 years after the original agreement was made-only a small portion of the road was built. The road was to be cut through the newly created Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was intended not only to allow people to make the journey but to provide ongoing access to their ancestral lands and cemeteries. To assuage those being displaced, part of the dam deal was to build a road from Bryson City to Deals Gap along a route north of the river. Where there had previously been small towns, villages, and homesteads along the north side of the river, there was now Fontana Lake, and the people who lived and worked there were either bought out or moved off. The people that did not benefit were the flooded-out communities along the banks of the rising water. War Department, the aluminum company stood to benefit from all that hydroelectric power coming in. The United States’ entry into World War II meant a huge spike in the demand for aluminum for aircraft, ships, and munitions, so a deal was struck for the TVA to build the dam with ALCOA as the primary consumer. It was a long and winding road to getting the dam built, and what was lost during the journey can be seen in the nearby “Road to Nowhere.”įontana Dam was built in 1941, on land given over to the Tennessee Valley Authority by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). The Fontana Dam, rising high above the Little Tennessee River in western North Carolina, is the tallest dam in the eastern United States.
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