Hiwassee is a small village in

Cherokee County Cherokee County is the name of eight counties in the United States: * Cherokee County, Alabama * Cherokee County, Georgia * Cherokee County, Iowa * Cherokee County, Kansas * Cherokee County, North Carolina * Cherokee County, Oklahoma * Cherokee Co ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

, United States, which sits next to the

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 ...

and the artificially created Hiwassee Reservoir, on

Hiwassee River The Hiwassee River has its headwaters on the north slope of Rocky Mountain in Towns County in the northern area of the State of Georgia. It flows northward into North Carolina before turning westward into Tennessee, flowing into the Tennessee Riv ...

Hiwassee Dam

The Dam itself was constructed between 1936 and 1940 by the

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...

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 feet across the Hiwassee River and produce 185,000 kilowatts of electricity. Hiwassee Dam was the world's tallest "overflow" dam until the completion of the

Aswan High Dam The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1960s, the Aswan High Dam, is one of the world's largest embankment dams, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. Its significance largely eclipsed the previous Aswan Lo ...

on the

Nile River The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest rive ...

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 surrounded by the Nantahala and

Cherokee National Forest The Cherokee National Forest is a United States National Forest located in the U.S. states of Tennessee and North Carolina that was created on June 14, 1920. The forest is maintained and managed by the United States Forest Service. It encompasses ...

s and is almost adjacent to the Appalachia Reservoir. Both reservoirs are important for local wildlife such as deer. The reservoir is relatively shallow with an average depth of 142 ft (44 m) and can exceed depths of 200 ft in places.

References

External links

Hiwassee Reservoir
- TVA {{authority control Hiwassee River Populated places on the Hiwassee River Protected areas of Cherokee County, North Carolina Tennessee Valley Authority Reservoirs in North Carolina Nantahala National Forest Cherokee National Forest Landforms of Cherokee County, North Carolina