The Miracle in the Wilderness

Fontana Dam Built with Record Speed to Serve Wartime Needs

It seemed an unlikely place for such a massive structure: a rugged North Carolina gorge in a remote part of the Smokies, accessible only by a dead-end dirt road. How would thousands of workers get there to build it? And once they arrived, how would they live?

TVA had wanted to build a hydroelectric dam at Fontana since its early days, but an agreement with the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), which controlled the land, proved elusive. So was congressional approval for what promised to be an extremely expensive project.

The brewing storm of war changed everything. Defense strategists, seeing the Tennessee Valley as a secure location for war industry, put the massive aluminum plants in Alcoa, Tennessee, to military use. They also established a top-secret weapons laboratory at a nearby place called Oak Ridge. Both required enormous amounts of electricity, and building new TVA dams became a national priority.

The Fontana project began to take shape in the four months before Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Just three weeks after the “day of infamy,” the first TVA trucks rumbled up the narrow roads to Fontana to begin construction.

Rugged and Remote

The project manager overseeing the effort was C.E. Blee, a tall, scholarly man with a name as distinctive as the task ahead. The dam would be an unusual design in the TVA system – extraordinarily tall at 480 feet, taller than many skyscrapers, and requiring nearly 3 million cubic yards of concrete. It wouldn’t have a conventional spillway; instead, water would drain through two 34-foot-diameter pipes that bypassed the dam and emptied into the streambed below.

If the design was unusual, the execution was even more so. The site, on the upper reaches of the Little Tennessee River, was 65 rugged miles from Knoxville, Tennessee, and even farther from Asheville, North Carolina. The nearest real town was Robbinsville, North Carolina – 35 miles away, more than an hour’s travel at the time.

The site’s remoteness and the accelerated wartime schedule made the project even more challenging. Laborers, mostly from western North Carolina, first had to make the site accessible. Crews widened the one-lane road and built a two-mile spur from the nearest railway line to haul in heavy equipment and supplies.

Workers labored seven days a week, around the clock, in three shifts. Night crews worked under floodlights. Gas rationing and the site’s isolation meant most workers stayed for months at a time – few had cars, and commuting was impossible.

TVA realized it would have to bring a town to them.

A Trim Little Town

TVA had experience building towns, drawing on lessons from Norris, the TVA community still thriving five years after Norris Dam’s completion. But Fontana was far more remote, and the dam was twice as tall.

At first, only a few hundred people lived on-site in camp-like conditions. But the workforce swelled. Though some were of draft age – one sign at Fontana read, “Work or Fight!” – many were older men, including veterans of World War I.

By 1943, the workforce had grown to about 5,000. Living in dormitories and prefabricated houses, they had created a real village – a “trim little town,” as one surprised reporter described it.

Fontana had a beauty parlor and barber shop, a basketball court and softball field, a post office, library, grocery store and soda stand, a dentist’s office, a small hospital, a movie theater, a school with 12 teachers and 300 students, and even a tiny jail. More than 90% of the town’s residents were men, but by 1943, 350 women lived there, too. At the weekly dances, they were in high demand.

With good jobs available across the country, it wasn’t easy to maintain such a large workforce in an isolated spot. Supervisors did what they could to reduce turnover, including installing a public address system that played music, news and inspirational messages from visiting dignitaries.

Beautiful Utility

The dam was completed in November 1944. The reservoir behind it, with an average depth of 130 feet – deeper than most TVA reservoirs – was rimmed by 248 miles of newly created shoreline.

Most important for the war effort, Fontana Dam generated 228 megawatts of electricity when the generator started up in early 1945, with more than half a year of war still ahead. Most of that power went to the aluminum factories in Alcoa, 45 miles away, which were rapidly producing metal for military aircraft.

Many found the place astonishing. Among them was an unlikely visitor: French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who came to Fontana on a wartime press tour in early 1945. Sartre was amazed by the city that had sprung up overnight in the wilderness.

Unlike Norris, which has remained a residential community for decades, Fontana was largely deserted after the dam was completed. Only about 50 families remained to tend the dam and power plant.

But it didn’t stay quiet for long. In 1946, under the supervision of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant III, Fontana Village opened as a privately run public resort adjacent to the reservoir. Within a few years, this most remote – and in many ways most beautiful – of TVA dams was also the most visited.

Today, more than 2 million people visit Fontana each year.