Fontana Dam - Background and Construction

Background and Construction

The Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) began investigating the Little Tennessee Valley around 1910 in hopes finding a power source for the massive amounts of electricity needed at its aluminum production operations at nearby Alcoa, Tennessee. In 1913, ALCOA purchased the Tallassee Power Company (now Tapoco), and by 1930 the two entities had completed Cheoah and Calderwood dams, as well as Santeetlah Dam on the Cheoah River. By the mid-1930s, ALCOA had assessed the Fontana site and had purchased the initial 15,000 acres (6,100 ha) for the dam's construction.

In 1935, the Tennessee Valley Authority, which was concerned with the Little Tennessee's effect on flood control in the greater Tennessee Valley, began negotiating with ALCOA to assume control of the Fontana project. Although ALCOA preferred TVA build the dam, TVA was unable to get necessary funding for the project until the outbreak of World War II in 1941, when emergency wartime initiatives called for a drastic increase in aluminum production. On August 14, 1941, TVA and ALCOA signed the "Fontana Agreement," which gave TVA possession of Fontana and control over the releases and output of Tapoco's Little Tennessee Valley dams, and in return guaranteed that ALCOA would be the primary benefactor of the dams' electrical output for at least twenty years. Congress authorized funding on December 17, 1941, and construction of Fontana Dam began on January 1, 1942.

The building of Fontana Dam and its reservoir required the purchase of 68,292 acres (27,637 ha) of land, 5,125 acres (2,074 ha) of which were forested and had to be cleared. 1,311 families, 1,047 graves, and over 60 miles (97 km) of roads had to be relocated. The towns of Fontana, Bushnell, Forney, and Judson were completely inundated. The village of Welch Cove (later renamed Fontana Village) was constructed just south of the dam to house the project's workers, whose numbers had reached 5,000 by 1943 in spite of nationwide manpower shortages. Fontana Village is now a summer resort and still has some of the original buildings.

The design of the dam was unusual for TVA at the time. It was feared that the 2,818,000 yd³ (2,155,000 m³) of concrete required for the dam would create a structure so massive, that heat released during its setting would be trapped for years, and would eventually cause cracks to form. To aide the release of this heat, engineers divided the dam into contraction joints and outfitted them with grout pipes and cooling coils. The dam's spillway presented another problem, as engineers were worried that the water's 400-foot (120 m) drop would eventually cause erosion issues at the dam's foundation. A special spillway was thus designed that drains water out through two 34-foot (10.3 m) diameter spill pipes into a diversion tunnel equipped with a deflection system. The dam's design is largely the work of TVA Chief Architect Roland Wank.

Fontana Dam was completed at a cost of $70,420,688.48 and the gates closed on November 11, 1944. Two generating units were placed in operation on January 20, 1945, in time to provide crucial energy for aluminum production in the closing months of World War II. Over 40,000 acres (16,000 ha) along Fontana Lake's north shore were eventually transferred to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and several thousand acres along the south shore were transferred to the U.S. Forest Service.