Land Between the Lakes

A Vignette of Waste

On the western part of the Tennessee-Kentucky border, the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers flow very close to each other for the space of about three counties: Lyon and Trigg in Kentucky, and Stewart in Tennessee. Though not visible by the naked eye, this place had been called “Land Between the Rivers” since white men settled it en masse in the 1830s.

Homesteads were built by the dozen. Trading posts turned to towns. Industries sprang up. The bottom soil was rich, the hills were full of iron ore, and there was more lumber than you could shake a stick at. By 1860, thousands of people called the region home.

When Tennessee seceded and Kentucky didn’t, the Confederate government saw fit to occupy the region despite Kentucky’s neutrality. Forts Henry and Donelson were constructed along the Tennessee, in order to prevent Union ships from sailing into the heart of the state’s namesake river. General Ulysses S. Grant opened up the Civil War in the West by capturing both Forts and a third of Albert Sidney Johnston’s men. The waste of resources that went into constructing and losing Forts Henry and Donelson proved fatal at Shiloh less than two months later.

After the war, life between the rivers continued as it was before. Towns grew and started taking names like Golden Pond, Energy, and Birmingham. Nascent industry brought a renewed demand for the region’s commodities, and no time was wasted in the improvement of the scant infrastructure that existed in the place. Roads, railroads, schools, hotels, and more were constructed to accommodate the growth, as the nation entered the 20th century.

When the Great Depression further impoverished an already impoverished South, President Roosevelt created the Tennessee Valley Authority as one of the flagship institutions of his New Deal. Their goal was to build dams and electrify the Tennessee River Valley, a place with great and as yet unexploited industrial potential. To leave it as it was would be a waste.

In 1938, the TVA planned to build the Kentucky Dam to impound the Cumberland into a lake. There was an obstacle in their way, however. The residents of the Land Between the Rivers hadn’t simply ceased to live as their ancestors had for going on a century. They owned their land outright, and many of the towns were incorporated. Some even had post offices!

But the federally guaranteed right of eminent domain made short work of that. First, the TVA offered compensation, and while some took it, most held out. So the TVA turned to other means. Land was condemned and bought out from under its inhabitants. Families were harassed by state and federal agents, until soon, one by one, the land was cleared.

As the water rose, these towns and homesteads with all of their hotels, law offices, churches, and bars were submerged by the rising water. Towns who were spared had to relocate to higher ground. Soon the only thing to remember them by were a scant few historic markers. Even the remnants of Fort Henry were submerged and remain so today.

In the 1960s, the Johnson administration determined that American society was heading full-speed towards a post-work order. It was believed that a 30- or even 20-hour workweek would be possible in the future. To avoid any waste with such a development, the Johnson administration created a council to develop recreational areas for post-work Americans to use. The TVA was a part of this committee, and saw an ideal place in their half-developed land between the rivers.

So the TVA repeated the same tricks they used in the New Deal era, except this time the fight was much more drawn out with much fewer inhabitants to resist. The Barkley Dam made a second lake opposite the first, the TVA had its recreation area, and the region’s name changed to “Land Between the Lakes.”

In total, over 800 families were uprooted from their homes, settling anywhere and everywhere near and far. The TVA gave up ownership of it in the 1990s, after 30 years of hemorrhaging revenue, acknowledging it as a massive waste.

The story of the region is the story of eminent domain used against a people not numerous enough to resist it effectively. First in pursuit of production, then in vain pursuit of recreation. The heritage and unique history of the region, broken down and measured in utils to determine its fate. And once it’s all said and done, no one but historians and displaced natives are left to remember it, always knowing the waste that came with destroying what came before.

But this is just about a three-county stretch from Kentucky to Tennessee. It’d be silly for me to think you could extrapolate this to any aspect of our lives today.