By the summer of 1941, Parksville Lake had already been part of the East Tennessee landscape for three decades. The reservoir was created by Ocoee Dam No. 1, completed in 1911 as one of the region’s earliest hydroelectric projects. TVA acquired the dam in 1939, and in August 1940 transferred much of the surrounding land to the U.S. Forest Service—placing the lake within the growing recreational landscape of the Cherokee National Forest.
That timing makes these photographs particularly interesting. Several of the 1941 images were documented during summer 1941, capturing Parksville in the months before the United States entered World War II and at a moment when the Forest Service was actively expanding recreational use around the lake. Existing summer cottages were joined by newly surveyed home sites, while beaches, boating, swimming and other facilities helped establish Parksville as a summer destination in southeastern Tennessee.
More than eighty years later, the same reservoir remains surrounded by Cherokee National Forest. Today Parksville Lake encompasses roughly 1,930 acres with 47 miles of shoreline, but these photographs preserve an earlier chapter—when a relatively new public recreation area was becoming a familiar Tennessee summer escape.
