(Photo courtesy R.F. Timberlake – Kerr Lake Park Watch on Facebook and Shutter Art Gallery)
It was the flood of 1940 that finally set in motion the creation of the reservoir and dam that we here in North Carolina call Kerr Lake, but our neighbors to the north in Virginia insist on calling Buggs Island Lake.
The Roanoke River has had 17 major floods since Europeans first arrived in this part of the world, said Mark Pace, local historian and North Carolina Room specialist at the Richard Thornton Library in Oxford. The 1940 flood put the Roanoke River a full 42 feet above its regular level, Pace said. If that type of flooding had occurred in downtown Henderson, for example, the only building that would not have been completely and utterly inundated would be the Vance Furniture Company building.
There had been a lot of talk about establishing some sort of flood control along the Roanoke River system for many years leading up to that devastating flood eight decades ago, but the talk turned to action after that event.
Pace and Bill Harris discussed the story behind the lake with two names, its economic impact and its future on the tri-weekly history segment of Town Talk Thursday.
Money to create the reservoir and dam was appropriated in the 1944 Federal Flood Act. Pace said the period between 1935 and 1975 saw the construction of many massive dams in the U.S. During that time, there was “a certain mentality that humans could control nature and use it to our own benefit,” Pace said.
Construction of the lake and dam began in 1947. Albert S. Bugg sold the land where the dam was to be built, a strategic location where the Roanoke River was quite narrow. It took 2,100 workers four and a half years of around-the-clock work to complete the project, Pace noted. That’s three shifts, day and night, 365 days of the year. The $5 million price tag then would be about $975 million in today’s dollars.
Workers excavated all the way to bedrock, placed concrete pillars and created what amounts to an earthen dam. There’s very little concrete in the dam, save the area around the hydroelectric plant, he added.
Longtime U.S. Congressman John H. Kerr from Warren County flipped the switch on Oct. 3, 1952 to officially open the dam and reservoir.
In an upset, Kerr lost his seat to newcomer politician L.H. Fountain in 1952. In a nod to his tireless efforts on the dam and reservoir project, Congress decided to name the reservoir and dam after Kerr.
Folks in Virginia had no problem naming the dam for the North Carolina politician, but they did have a problem naming the reservoir for him, considering three-quarters of the lake lies in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In fact, Pace said, 95 percent of the water in the lake comes from Virginia. “It’s their water,” he said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers claims the land under the water, the land around the lake shoreline and the flood plain, which totals about 110,000 acres. The Corps owns to the 320 mark – that’s 320 feet above sea level – all around the lake, and lake property owners must refrain from disturbing any Corps-owned property.
“It’s one of the truly significant things that’s happened in our area – the creation of the lake,” Pace said. The lake and dam provide flood control, its original purpose, as well as hydroelectric power. Dominion Energy buys about 58 percent of the electricity the dam generates for its Virginia customers; Progress Energy gets the balance for its North Carolina customers.
And recreation is what Pace called an unintended consequence of the lake. Boating, fishing and camping are popular activities all around Kerr Lake, which boosts the local economy.
But not everyone was initially in favor of building the lake, Pace said. Henderson officials originally were on record in opposition of the lake. Agriculture was king in Vance County back in those days and it was not appealing to think that 10,000 acres of good farmland would become a lake bottom.
“People did not envision what the lake could be,” Pace said. “They didn’t want to lose their homes and their land.”
Almost 400 families lost their homes to the lake. And more than 1,000 graves had to be removed and re-interred in nearby cemeteries.
The lake also took Occoneechee Island, which was located near Clarksville, Va. Pace said the Smithsonian Institution conducted an archaeological survey there before the land was swallowed up by the lake. “That island was probably the most significant Native American archaeological site from Richmond to Raleigh,” he said. In addition to a Native American fort that figured prominently in Bacon’s Rebellion, the trading path passed through that area, too.
The United States doesn’t build dams any more – they’re too expensive. The $100 million price tag for Kerr Lake in the early ‘50s would easily be $1.2 billion today. The life span of a hydroelectric dam like the Kerr Dam is between 100 and 150 years, Pace said. After that, equipment fails, cracks form in the dam, and then it becomes a question of whether it’s cost-effective to repair and replace.
Kerr Dam will celebrate its 69th anniversary next month.
TownTalk: History of Kerr Lake – Click Play