It was on of the key dams, which was build to make the Muscle Shoals a navigable waterway. Wheeler Dam was named after Joseph Wheeler, who was a Confederate General during the Civil War. Wheeler Dam was completed in 1936. TVA began construction on the dam six months after President Franklin D. Roosevelt created it in 1933. It was the first of eight dams that TVA constructed on the Tennessee River.
Dams allow easier navigation by creating deep reservoirs that fill behind the dams.
The dams of the Tennessee allow over 45 million tons of barge traffic to navigate up and down the river every year. Without the strategically located dams, portions of the Tennessee River would be treacherous to travel. Before Wheeler, Pickwick Landing, and Wilson Dam, the Muscle Shoals plagued the portion of the Tennessee River that flowed through Northwest Alabama. Muscle Shoals was a virtually impassible stretch of shallow rapids. The creation of Wheeler and the other key dams provided a greater water depth so that navigation would be possible.