Hiwassee is a small village in Cherokee County

Cherokee County, North Carolina

- Transportation :Cherokee County is well known in North Carolina as the westernmost of the state's 100 counties. Several US and state highways serve the county, linking it with other regions of North Carolina, along with the neighboring states of Georgia and Tennessee.US 64 - the longest highway...

, North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

, which sits next to the Hiwassee Dam

Hiwassee Dam

Hiwassee Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Hiwassee River in Cherokee County, in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is one of three dams on the river owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the late 1930s to bring flood control and electricity to the region. ...

 and the artificially created Hiwassee Reservoir, on Hiwassee River

Hiwassee River

The Hiwassee River has its headwaters on the north slope of Rocky Mountain in Towns County in northern Georgia and flows northward into North Carolina before turning westward into Tennessee, flowing into the Tennessee River a few miles west of State Route 58 in Meigs County, Tennessee...

.

Hiwassee Dam

The Dam itself was constructed between 1936 and 1940 by the Tennessee Valley Authority

Tennessee Valley Authority

The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...

 as part of Roosevelt's New Deal policy. Hiwassee Dam is still maintained by the TVA. It has a height of 307 feet, spans a distance of 1,376 across the Hiwassee River and can produce 185,000 kilowatts of electricity.

Hiwassee Dam was the worlds tallest "overflow" dam until the completion of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River in Egypt in the early 1970s. The depth from the top of the spillgates to the bedrock at the face of the dam is 285 feet.

Hiwassee Reservoir

The reservoir serves recreational, power generation and flood control purposes. It is beautifully situated surrounded by the Nantahala

Nantahala National Forest

The Nantahala National Forest, established in 1920, is a national forest located in the American state of North Carolina. The word "Nantahala" is a Cherokee word meaning "Land of the Noonday Sun." The name is appropriate as, in some spots, the sun only reaches the floors of the deep gorges of the...

 and Cherokee National Forest

Cherokee National Forest

The Cherokee National Forest is a large National Forest created on July 19, 1936, by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, operated by the U.S. Forest Service and encompassing some 640,000 acres .-Location:...

s and almost right next to the Appalachia Reservoir. Both reservoirs are important for local wildlife such as deer.

External links

• Hiwassee Reservoir - TVA