1946 – 1951: Cherokee Lake

There was a time when Cherokee Lake itself was new.

In the 1940s, the familiar expanse of water winding through the hills of East Tennessee had only recently taken shape. Roads that had once crossed a river valley now approached a reservoir. New shorelines stretched along farms and wooded hillsides, boat docks began appearing at the water’s edge, and communities that had long been oriented around the Holston River were adjusting to an entirely different landscape.

The photographs preserved from the late 1940s and early 1950s capture Cherokee Lake during this period of transition. What emerges from them is not simply a record of a reservoir, but a glimpse of how quickly people began building a culture around the new lake.

Before There Was a Cherokee Lake

Cherokee Lake was created by the construction of Cherokee Dam on the Holston River by the Tennessee Valley Authority during the early 1940s.

The project was part of the enormous transformation taking place throughout the Tennessee Valley following the creation of TVA in 1933. Across the region, dams were constructed for flood control, electricity generation, navigation and economic development. In the process, rivers that had shaped communities for generations were altered into a network of reservoirs.

Cherokee Dam was completed during World War II, and the waters behind it spread into the surrounding valleys of East Tennessee.

The result was a landscape that would have been almost unrecognizable to someone who had known the area only a decade earlier.

By the time these photographs were taken, however, Cherokee Lake was already becoming something more than an infrastructure project.

People had begun finding their way to the water.

A Fishing Culture Takes Hold

Fishing became one of the defining features of life on the new reservoir.

Throughout photographs from the period, fishermen appear along the shoreline and at the early boat docks with crappie, bass and other catches pulled from Cherokee’s waters. Some came from nearby communities such as Morristown, Rogersville and Gatlinburg. Others traveled from considerably farther away.

The lake was already becoming a destination.

Boat docks emerged as important gathering points along the shoreline. Places such as German Creek and the Hamblen County docks offered access to the water while also becoming part of the social landscape surrounding it.

A day on Cherokee might begin before sunrise.

Boats would move onto water still covered in morning fog, with the ridges of East Tennessee barely visible beyond them. Hours later, fishermen returned to the docks, where catches were weighed and compared. Friends gathered around strings of crappie. Fathers brought their sons. TVA personnel studied the fish being taken from the reservoir as they worked to understand and manage the developing fishery.

Then, toward evening, boats remained scattered across the lake as the sun dropped behind the surrounding hills.

It is easy to recognize the beginnings of the lake culture that still exists in East Tennessee today.

Life Beyond the Water

The photographs also preserve the landscape surrounding Cherokee Lake before decades of development reshaped its shoreline.

From Tate Springs, motorists traveled long stretches of U.S. Highway 11-W with the new reservoir appearing beyond open fields. Livestock grazed near the water. Mountains remained a constant backdrop.

The Tate Springs Hotel, once part of a resort community known for its mineral springs, stood along the highway near the lake. The presence of places like Tate Springs connected the newly created reservoir with an older tradition of travelers coming into this part of East Tennessee for recreation and escape.

From the ground, Cherokee Lake could appear almost intimate—a fisherman standing beside the water or a boat disappearing into the morning haze.

From the air, it was something entirely different.

Aerial photographs from the period reveal water stretching between ridges and around former valleys, crossed by highways and surrounded by farmland, forests and the mountains beyond. They show just how dramatically the construction of Cherokee Dam had altered the geography of the region.

More than seventy years later, the landscape has changed considerably since those first years, but the reason people find their way to the water has changed remarkably little.