The Tennessee Valley Project

Abstract

IN many ways the Tennessee Valley project is the most remarkable of the schemes fostered by the United States Government to promote economic recovery. From the engineering point of view its structures are less spectacular than those of Boulder Dam or the Grand Coulee Project. At first it had less news value than the tide-harnessing power plant in Maine, the flood-control work on the Mississippi, or the hundred-million-dollar canal which is to irrigate Imperial Valley. Nor does it compete in local public interest with many schemes in which the Federal Government is cooperating with city or state authorities, such as the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco or the new tunnel under the Hudson River at New York. But as an attempt to attack on a wide front the major economic problems of a region it has no equal. The Tennessee and its tributaries drain a basin of 40,600 square milesfour-fifths the area of England-covering two-thirds of the state of Tennessee and parts of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The river draws its water from a region of varied geological structure which gives rise to correspondingly marked contrasts in topography, soil conditions, and vegetations. The great Appalachian valley is flanked by two strips of higher land, the Cumberland plateau and the Blue Ridge (here broadened into the Great Smokey and the Unaka Mountains), extensions of structures which parallel the Atlantic coast for over 800 miles. The sharply folded strata of the Great Valley itself show wide variation in their resistance to erosion, the harder formations standing up in strong relief as long level-topped ridges separated by valleys 00oo or more feet deep. These ridges however are commanded by the still higher ramparts on each side-the crests of the Great Smokeys rise well above 6000 feet-and from such vantage points the Great Valley is seen to be well named (Fig. 2).