page_title: Chickamauga Dam
section_title: Background and construction
hierarchical_section_title: Chickamauga Dam / Background and construction
caption_attribution_description: English: TVA's design plan for Chickamauga Dam, on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.
context_page_description: The Chickamauga Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. The dam is owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the late 1930s as part of a New Deal era initiative to improve navigation and bring flood control and economic development to the Tennessee Valley. The dam impounds the 36,240-acre Chickamauga Lake and feeds into Nickajack Lake. The dam and associated infrastructure were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
  Chickamauga Dam is named for the Chickamaugas, a politically detached branch of the Cherokee whose chief village was located just north of the dam site during the 18th century. The tribe's name has also been applied to several streams in the Chattanooga area, as well as an important American Civil War battle and a sandbar that existed at the dam site prior to its construction.
context_section_description: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveyed the Chickamauga Island site in the 1920s as a possible site for a dam to protect Chattanooga, which had suffered serious flood damage in 1867, 1875, 1886, and 1917, and to enhance navigation along the river.  When the Tennessee Valley Authority was formed in the mid-1930s, it assumed control of navigation and flood control operations in the Tennessee Valley.  After extensive surveying, TVA chose the tip of Chickamauga Island over several other sites surveyed by the Army Corps in the vicinity.  The Chickamauga project was authorized December 31, 1935, and dam construction began January 13, 1936.
  The construction of Chickamauga Dam and its reservoir required the purchase of 61,350 acres (24,830 ha) of land, 6,030 acres (2,440 ha) of which were wooded and had to be cleared.  903 families, 24 cemeteries, and 81 miles (130 km) of roads had to be relocated.  An embankment was built to protect parts of Dayton, Tennessee from the reservoir's backwaters, and several roads and buildings in the town of Soddy were relocated or modified.  A total of 39 bridges affected by the reservoir were either raised or moved.
  The navigation lock at Chickamauga Dam was designed by the Army Corps of Engineers, and was based on the lock design at Guntersville Dam.  The lock was initially 60 by 360 feet (18 m × 110 m), although the dam was designed in a way that allowed a larger 110 by 600 feet (34 m × 183 m) lock to be installed if increases in river traffic ever required it.
  Chickamauga Dam was completed and its gates closed on January 15, 1940, constructed at a cost of $42,065,000.  The lock was placed into operation on February 26, 1940, and the first generator went online May 4, 1940.  Two recreational areas— Booker T. Washington State Park and Harrison Bay State Park— were developed as segregated parks along Chickamauga Lake's shores, with the former originally being for African-Americans and the latter originally being for caucasians.
caption: Design plan for Chickamauga Dam, circa 1935
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