Fontana Dam

Title

Fontana Dam

Artist

Pat Turner

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photos

Description

Fontana Dam is the largest dam east of the Rocky Mountains and at the time of its construction, it was the fourth tallest dam in the world.
Construction of Fontana Dam began in 1942 and was completed in 1944. It took just 36 months to build.
Fontana Dam is a hydroelectric facility. It has three generating units with a net dependable capacity of 304 megawatts. Net dependable capacity is the amount of power a dam can produce on an average day, minus the electricity used by the dam itself.
The dam is 480 feet high and stretches 2,365 feet across the Little Tennessee River.
Fontana Reservoir provides 238 miles of shoreline and 10,230 acres of water surface for recreation activities.
In a year with normal rainfall, the water level in Fontana Reservoir varies about 56 feet from summer to winter to provide seasonal flood storage.
Fontana has a flood-storage capacity of 514,000 acre-feet.
The Appalachian Trail crosses the top of the dam and the hot showers at a nearby trail shelter have led grateful hikers to dub it the Fontana Hilton.
1,311 families, 1,047 graves, and over 60 miles of roads had to be relocated. The towns of Fontana, Bushnell, Forney, and Judson were completely inundated.
Fontana Dam was completed at a cost of $70,420,688.48 and the gates closed on November 11, 1944.
In all over 5,000 workers helped build the dam in one of the most remote areas of North Carolina at the time.
The North Shore Road:
The construction of Fontana Dam led to the flooding of most of North Carolina Highway 288, which connected Deals Gap and Bryson City. The National Park Service, after gaining possession of Fontana's north shore tracts, reached an agreement with Swain County to replace the north shore road in the 1940s. By 1972, however, environmental concerns and funding issues had continuously stalled construction, and just 7.2 miles of the road had been completed (just outside Bryson City). In the 1970s, environmental concerns completely halted the road's progress, and locals nicknamed the unfinished road "The Road to Nowhere".
To this day the road has not been finished and most likely never will be.
Incline Railway:
The Fontana Dam site previously hosted a 800 mm (2 ft 7 1⁄2 in) narrow gauge funicular railway for tourists to get to the bottom of the dam from the visitors center. It is no longer there.
Slot Cut:
The dam gets cut along slots every 4-5 years to stop its growth (alkali-aggregate reaction) from causing cracks at top of the dam which expands quickly.
Fontana Dam was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.

Uploaded

June 30th, 2018

Statistics

Viewed 450 Times  -  Last Visitor from Romeo, MI on 04/26/2024 at 1:36 PM

Colors

Embed

Sales Sheet