Douglas Lake a Tennessee Jewel

Tennessee‘s Douglas Lake is familiar water to those who follow stories here at WVMetronews.com.  Teays Valley‘s Jeremy Starks won the Bassmaster Elite Series event on the water just east of Knoxville, Tennessee earlier this year.

However, aside from being a great fishery, Douglas is a lake which is a haven for water recreation enthusiasts, vacationers, and a source of power in the region.

Virtually all of the water in the western North Carolina watershed winds up in Douglas Lake.   Three rivers, the Pigeon, French Broad, and Nolichucky merge to form this lake at the dam outside Dandridge, Tennessee.   

The dam was completed in 1943, the fastest project ever built on the TVA system.   The construction took only 18-months.  The rushed job was out of necessity to create additional electricity with World War II raging on two fronts.  The nearby Alcoa Aluminum Plant was a critical provider of the sheet metal to build airplanes and other implements of war and needed the electricity to power its factories 24/7.

The rushed timeline negated the usual channels of land procurement.  Instead, the dam was built and private property flooded.  Nobody complained since everybody was interested in winning the war and understood the sacrifices.  Today, it often complicates the job of TWRA Fish and Wildlife Officers.  The problem is people no own hundreds of parts of the lake attached to their lakefront property.  It can at times be a sticky wicket in the area of trespassing laws. 

However, the lake serves as a playground for water sports enthusiasts in the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains.   Thousands of recreational hours are spent fishing, boating, water skiing, and with other activities on this mountain lake which still provides power to thousands in east Tennessee, western North Carolina, and throughout the south.