Posted inNews & History

The Price of Power: How the TVA Impacted Economic Development in East Tennessee

January 12, 2022
Farmland TVA dam

Since the 1940s, the counties of Union and Grainger in East Tennessee have been subject to economic development projects that have been met with opposition. Evidence highlights this opposition was a  response by the “displaced generation” of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Norris and Cherokee hydroelectric projects, and the controversial eminent domain and family removal methods used in these counties by the Tennessee Valley  Authority. 

Rural by nature, the East Tennessee counties of Grainger and Union have histories as exurban “bedroom communities,” lacking diversified economies within their boundaries (“Grainger Census”, “Union Census”).

With the automation of their historic agricultural backbones, both counties have seen their job markets dwindle (“Comprehensive”). In 2021, both were classified “at-risk” of becoming “economically distressed,” placing them among the top 10% worst counties regarding economics nationwide, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), a federal economic development agency (EDA) (“Distressed”). 

For placement, the ARC would cite both counties’ per capita income, unemployment, and poverty rates (“Classifying”). This decay has triggered the ‘brain drain’ of the counties’ young adult demographic, who are flocking to progressive urban employment centers per the East Tennessee

Development District (ETDD), the region’s EDA (“Comprehensive”).  Historically, the counties have been subject to economic development proposals to seek improvement.  These projects have encountered recurring hesitancy and opposition. 

Reactionary sentiment towards economic development, while synonymous with the larger Appalachian region’s culture, significantly strengthened in these counties following the 1940s. 

Local experts suggest evidence has pinpointed this behavior to government operations that changed these counties controversially, the Norris and Cherokee hydroelectric projects by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

TVA Comes to Town

In the 1930s to 1940s, the TVA would impound the Clinch and Powell rivers in Union County, and the Holston River in Grainger County for Norris and Cherokee dams respectively as part of the Unified Development of the Tennessee River System plan (“Cherokee”, “Norris”). 

Most properties acquired by TVA for their dams’ reservoirs were generational family farms, and both counties were the most significantly impacted for their respective projects, with 1,100 Union families removed for Norris, and 434 Grainger families removed for Cherokee (“Cherokee”, “Norris”).

Families forced to relocate presented strong opposition to the move, and to TVA. In the Cherokee Project’s comprehensive report, TVA cited resistance from the 400 families in the Bean Station area of Grainger County as a major hurdle, “This stability of tenure and reluctance to move complicated the problem of relocation and removal.” (“Cherokee”). 

TVA officials attempted to compromise by relocating Bean Station as a planned town, but this plan was scrapped following continued community defiance, leaving families on their own (Figure 1).

Recolored image of farmland in Tennessee Valley
Figure 1a: The town of Bean Station in Grainger County, 1938. Source: TVA
Image of flooded Tennessee Valley After Dam
Figure 1b: Bean Station site, 2021. Picture by author

In Union County, the Big Valley region encountered an equivalent fate for Norris Dam, but did not receive attempts to relocate as a planned community.

Big Valley families would gather for a large-scale TVA protest named the ‘Last Round-up’ in a local schoolhouse (Figure 2). Big Valley residents attempted legal action against TVA’s property acquisition division (Wilson, McDonald & Muldowny).

In the 1981 historical publication, TVA and the Dispossessed, University of Tennessee professors Michael McDonald and John Muldowny investigated the struggle endured by the Big Valley families of Union County. The two would reveal that families “complained of ‘inequitable treatment at the hands of the Tennessee Valley Authority and its agents.” These acts of defiance would prompt court orders and federal lawsuits forcing the families’ removal (Stephens). 

While hundreds of homes, businesses, and farms would be washed out in both counties by the TVA, the feelings from those displaced would stand firm for generations, unbeknownst to the agency and those outside of the county lines.

Union County families gather at Loyston School for "Last Round-up" protest against TVA
Union County families gather at Loyston School for “Last Round-up” protest against TVA, October 14, 1935. Source: Lewis Hine

Not in My Backyard

Entering the mid-century, Grainger and Union counties encountered economic development proposals that were met with opposition similar to attitudes expressed towards the TVA. With federal investments for transportation in the 1950s, the Interstate 81 highway corridor was proposed to travel along US-11W through Grainger County into Knoxville. Encountering resistance of familiar eminent domain arguments, I-81 would be rerouted (Figure 3).

US 11W in Grainger County, 2021.
Figure 3: US 11W in Grainger County, 2021. Once proposed as Interstate 81 and scheduled for widening as a four-lane expressway since the 1970s, these proposals were met with consistent opposition. Photo by author.

By the later mid-century, both counties established planning commissions identifying needs in infrastructure, land use, and economic development. For Grainger County, plans supporting regional water and wastewater systems would stall following local misinformation campaigns. Similar plans stalled in the Big Valley area of Union County, as electricity, paved roadways, and water systems wouldn’t be established until the 1950s for electricity, and the 1980s for water and roadways (Gilmore,Nacke).

Decades later, both counties faced the consolidations of their school systems by the Tennessee state government. Residents in the counties voiced distaste with the closure of smaller community-based schools to no avail, as the state government would force these closures, and the construction of new regionally-based schools, using eminent domain (Gilmore).

In the suburban sprawl era of the later 20th century, incorporation disputes arose from opposition to development or annexation. In Grainger County, Blaine residents would stop the development of a landfill after incorporation, with Bean Station following suit in 1996, stopping annexation by neighboring Morristown (“Blast,” Gilmore). 

In Union County, Plainview became a municipality after suing bordering Luttrell for attempted annexation in 1992 (Ashley). As the 21 st century dawned, anti-development attitudes declined at large in both counties with the migration of ‘snowbirds’ from the northern United States for permanent residencies and the lakefront property created by the Norris and Cherokee projects. Nonetheless, anti-development sentiment found refuge in the counties’ government operations, as those in power were often established, multi-generational residents. In Grainger County, officials would thwart another regional sewer system in 2011, and county-wide land-use regulations eight years later (Littleton, Wolfe).

In Union County, officials stalled a downtown revitalization plan for its county seat of Maynardville in 2014 (Gilmore). With this recurring history of anti-development behaviors in these counties after the completion of TVA’s hydroelectric projects, it is not difficult to identify the correlation between the anti-development attitudes of the mid-century onward, and the attitudes of those displaced by the TVA. 

However, as time progressed, society became unaware of the profound toll the TVA’s measures had on the displaced mentally and emotionally.

Understanding the Displaced

To understand how the attitudes of those displaced by the TVA impacted behavior towards economic development in Grainger and Union counties, one must understand the lifestyles of the displaced before and after displacement. In a Journal of East Tennessee History entry, historian Michael Rogers analyzed conditions of those removed for Norris and Cherokee dams. Citing TVA studies, residents in the Norris and Cherokee basins were in “dire poverty with seemingly little hope of material betterment.”

Rogers pointed out families impacted by TVA for both projects exhibited diverse opinions on the agency’s efforts, with the younger and more educated showing approval, and the more “established residents,” i.e.,the elderly and less educated, voicing dissent (Rogers). 

However, residents critical of TVA provided sufficient reasoning, as their stress would engulf them post-displacement. In the 1983 documentary, The Electric Valley, Curt Stiner, a Union County farmer turned Norris Dam worker, discussed when TVA acquired his farm:

“First land I ever had in my life, and bought it off my dad. I built me a house and a good barn on it. Built a good crib, good smokehouse, dug a well, and got only to use it for some 12 months after I done all that. TVA came along and made me a price on it, and they didn’t offer me for what I paid to my dad for that land, and after I put all those buildings on it. I said, ‘I’ll never sign your contract with that price.’ They came back and reappraised it. They raised the price, and I signed the contract, but I didn’t get what I should’ve. I didn’t even get enough for the buildings I built on it.”

Like Curt Stiner, families received ‘just compensation’ they believed did not amount to what they put into their land. Following removal, the displaced developed an insurmountable amount of stress and despondency from the losses of their homes, farms, cemeteries, and communities that felt as much a part of them as their family.

Unable to bear this stress, some took extremes to make their point clear on TVA. Residents of Union and Grainger counties refused to fish, swim, or boat on the reservoirs created on top of their former homesteads and boycotted the use of TVA-established parks. Dozens committed suicide (Wilson, Gilmore). In both counties, properties facing minimal inundation were acquired by TVA entirely, and decades later were often sold off to private developers for prices well-over those offered to the displaced (Figure 3).

Inundated Grainger County farm with asking price of $8.3 million, 2021. Photo by author.
Inundated Grainger County farm with asking price of $8.3 million, 2021. Photo by author.

Within the TVA, employees expressed skepticism of the agency’s property acquisition methods. In his 1982 tell-all, Tales from the Grass Roots of TVA: 1933-1952, ex-TVA field worker Marshall Wilson, described having an “almost traumatic flood of emotions” regarding his experience with family removals in Union County for Norris Dam (Wilson). 

Wilson reported instances of lawyers pocketing displacee payments, surveyors marking land for acquisition that wouldn’t be inundated, documenters dismissing removed families as ‘illegitimate,’ and Wilson himself faced termination after publishing interviews of townsfolk expressing criticism of TVA’s methods (Wilson). 

It was the actions of the TVA that were cornerstones of emerging resentment towards economic development in Union and Grainger counties onward.

One Generation Suffers for Others to Prosper?

Displaced families of the Norris-Cherokee projects, while expressing negative attitudes towards economic development similar to residents ever since, did want their communities to improve, but didn’t know that it would come as an unbearable cost with the loss of their homes, farms, gravesites, and communities in the name of ‘progress.’ Even as those displaced in Union and Grainger counties were hoping TVA’s dams would do exactly as promised to bring better lives for the next generations, the Norris and Cherokee hydroelectric projects would ‘set them back’ despite their crucial role in the projects (Gilmore). 

As the larger East Tennessee region grew overtime with increased electricity access from Norris and Cherokee dams, the displaced felt they were not acknowledged for ‘their part’ in the development of the region, specifically the post-World War II economic growth in the regional hubs of Knoxville, Morristown, and Oak Ridge (Gilmore). 

This discontent was influenced by what the families viewed as TVA using them as ‘pawns’ for political purposes, as Union and Grainger counties did not experience this same growth as the larger urban centers. As cited earlier, the Big Valley area of Union County would not be electrified until two decades after the completion of Norris Dam, as electricity from Norris Dam would be ‘prioritized’ for the expansion of Oak Ridge and Knoxville into the 1940s (Stephen). 

In Grainger County, TVA did not fund the reconstruction of utility systems at the Tate Springs resort, which served the Bean Station region, whereas the agency would cover the costs of similar facilities inundated by Cherokee Dam for the municipalities of Jefferson City and Morristown in neighboring Jefferson and Hamblen counties (“Cherokee”). 

For the relocated gravesites, the TVA would not fund the continued maintenance of them unlike similar sites in Great Smoky Mountains National Park by the National Park Service (Stephens). TVA promised to bring opportunities for the upcoming generations of Union and Grainger Countians with the dams but instead prioritized the aid of affluent cities such as Knoxville and Morristown. 

With this, the dispossessed held their contempt for the TVA as they grew older. Mary Lynn Gilmore, a retired school teacher and the daughter of Curt Stiner, discussed why the dispossessed generation withheld their beliefs over time:

“One generation pays the price so others can prosper. This is what my father and the thousands that were displaced for Norris and Cherokee felt, because it was the same situation with both projects. TVA promised to give new life here, but politics got in the way. Their projects’ documentation of our areas only added more to the stereotypes of us as ‘illegitimate hillbillies,’ and ‘progress’ wouldn’t come here until the ‘snowbirds’ and the Knoxville elites bought property and used the reservoirs for recreation.”

Gilmore suggested these events led to the displaced keeping their stories “to their selves, and to their graves,” as the families of the Norris-Cherokee projects felt that TVA’s documentation was responsible for their dismissal by society and government personnel as ‘illegitimate’ and ‘hillbillies’” (Gilmore)

While several like Curt Stiner had discussed their experiences, their stories largely remained within Union and Grainger counties. Even then, the stories would reach little ears as their descendants moved away for opportunities in Knoxville and Morristown with ‘snowbirds’ taking their places raising housing prices, out-buying local residents (Figure 4). By 2020, the Sharps Chapel area of Union County would become one of the most expensive areas in Greater Knoxville for housing sale values (Stacker). 

Adding insult to injury, the Norris and Cherokee reservoirs’ popularity for recreation and real estate would lead to ‘snowbirds’ and tourists becoming unaware of the story of the reservoirs’ formations (Cook).

This was driven with the lack of the displaced opening about their ordeals, and instead many conformed to degrading stereotypes they wanted to challenge by voicing opposition to future economic development proposals, since the TVA’s projects were these residents’ first exposure to “economic development.” 

Luxury summer homes along the Norris Reservoir shoreline
Figure 4: Luxury summer homes along the Norris Reservoir shoreline, 2021. Picture by author.

Conclusion

In Union and Grainger counties, the Tennessee Valley Authority imposed a legacy that altered the political and sociological characteristics of these counties for generations in the name of ‘economic development.’ To those displaced, their introduction to economic development invoked feelings of uncertainty of their families’ future, dismissal from society, and broken promises to bring new life to their communities.

These feelings have been reserved amongst the displaced and their descendants, but future economic development proposals brought them back to their memories and stories of the TVA. However, there is just enough blame on the TVA for influencing these attitudes, as well as the residents struggling how to move forward. Plans supporting ‘economic development’ have since matured by adding in the human factor to projects. 

The TVA of the present is not the imperious TVA of the Norris-Cherokee era. Nonetheless, this does not make any suffering endured by the displaced Union and Grainger families less significant, as their stories should be acknowledged.

Officials and communities must learn to move forward with economic development in these counties, with respect to the past and those that sacrificed so much.

The term ‘economic development’ shouldn’t strike fear into the communities that it is supposed to help. In the case of those dispossessed from the Norris-Cherokee projects in Union and Grainger counties, it may never have another meaning. Society must learn from the mistakes the TVA inflicted on these counties, and from the ‘established’ residents that have jeopardized these counties’ economic futures because of their misinterpretations of ‘economic development’ based on the unfortunate events under that term. 

These rural, economically endangered counties’ next generations depend on learning and correcting from the past to make proactive and better choices in the future.

Works Cited

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Last updated on February 22, 2023