Special Collections Lecture Series

Appalachian Removals and Relocations:
TVA Relocations in Appalachia

Osborne Family Tuesday, April 10
"Goodbye to the Old Home Place:
Removals by the National Park Service and the Tennessee Valley Authority"

Bruce Wheeler, UT history professor emeritus

Beginning in the 1930s the Tennessee Valley Authority removed and relocated thousands of families, structures, and gravesites to make way for the dams and resulting lakes on the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Using the federal power of imminent domain, by 1946 the TVA had acquired approximately 1.1 million acres (less than one-third of it inundated by its lakes) and had removed an estimated 72,000 people. The resulting dams and lakes generated electric power, controlled flood waters, spurred tourism, and fostered regional economic development.

Before inundation, TVA planned relocation for homes, bridges, and, most importantly, people. Entire towns were abandoned and moved to higher ground, while human remains in cemeteries and Native American burial sites were removed and re-interred elsewhere. Although many fought removal, later interviews and studies suggest that most people were better off afterwards. Still, it is difficult to assess the complex gains and losses due to TVA relocations.

TVA coupled its massive engineering mission with a larger removal and resettlement program. The agencyís Social and Economic Division completed careful studies of the people and places affected by TVA engineering projects. Their reports often included the ìbefore and afterî perspective of relocation. A clear picture of Southern Appalachia during the 1930s emerges from these sociological studies.