Table Of ContentABSTRACT
SHAPARD, ROBERT PAINE. Building an Inland Sea: Clarks Hill Lake on the Upper
Savannah and the Twentieth-Century Lives, Land, and River Hidden by its Waters. (Under
the direction of Matthew Morse Booker.)
This thesis recounts the origins of the dam and reservoir built by the Army Corps of
Engineers in the late 1940s and early 1950s on the Savannah River, near Clarks Hill, South
Carolina, and explores the experiences of people required to sell property and move to make
way for the reservoir. To build the Clarks Hill hydropower project, the Corps acquired more
than 140,000 acres on both sides of the river in Georgia and South Carolina, with about half
that acreage flooded to create the reservoir. The history of people who had owned land before
the Corps, and in some cases lived on it, has receded from awareness for many who visit or
observe the lake today, to the point that it seems more like a natural feature than a product of
large-scale engineering. That underlying history receded further when Congress changed the
name of the project from Clarks Hill to the J. Strom Thurmond Dam and Lake in 1987, in
that Thurmond did not stand for the specific residents and landscape impacted by the dam.
Using oral-history interviews conducted by the author, and drawing on the written record as
well, this thesis seeks to reclaim space in the story of the project for the people dispossessed
of land and homes. The power of the federal government effectively limited the options for
those who otherwise would have chosen to keep their land. But they had stronger
connections to the land, and found more value in it, than the government and supporters of
the dam explicitly recognized in the arguments they made for the project, and in early
assessments of the reservoir basin. More people lived within the zone of land acquisition,
they were a more diverse group, they felt greater bonds to the land, and saw more potential in
it for the future. It was not such a used-up, vacant, and valueless landscape.
Building an Inland Sea: Clarks Hill Lake on the Upper Savannah
And the Twentieth-Century Lives, Land, and River
Hidden by its Waters
by
Robert Paine Shapard
A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
North Carolina State University
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
History
Raleigh, North Carolina
2009
APPROVED BY:
_______________________________ ______________________________
Dr. Matthew Morse Booker Dr. Katherine Mellen Charron
Committee Chair
_______________________________ ______________________________
Dr. David Gilmartin Dr. Blair L.M. Kelley
DEDICATION
To Sarah, Ella, and Samantha, and the members of my family tree in its broadest sense, who
make everything possible and worthwhile.
ii
BIOGRAPHY
Robert P. Shapard was born in Atlanta, grew up in Griffin, Ga., and graduated from Williams
College in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He briefly indulged a passion for golf in
Florida after college, and returned to school at the University of Georgia to earn a master’s
degree in journalism in 1994. Rob worked as an editor at American City & County magazine
and a newspaper reporter for the Griffin Daily News and Durham Herald-Sun for thirteen
years before entering the master’s program in U.S. history at North Carolina State University.
In August 2009, he will follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather by becoming a
graduate of N.C. State, and will pursue a doctorate in history at UNC Chapel Hill.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When one sits down to thank all the people who helped to make an accomplishment possible,
the list can get out of hand rather quickly. These acknowledgements, therefore, are
incomplete. But to begin in general terms, I thank the superb faculty, staff members, and
fellow graduate students in the Department of History at N.C. State University with whom I
have interacted since 2007. It has been a true privilege and blessing to learn from all of them,
and I will carry the department’s banner proudly in the years to come.
I came to N.C. State in large part because of the encouragement and kindness of Professor
Matthew M. Booker. He believed in my ability, as a forty-something student, to find a place
and succeed in the graduate program, and to continue to the doctoral level. His confidence
came at a critical time, and I will be eternally grateful to him. The guidance, insight, support,
and patience of Prof. Booker and my committee members, professors Katherine Mellen
Charron, David Gilmartin, and Blair Kelley, have been incredibly enriching and deeply
appreciated. I also had the great fortune to work two semesters as a teaching assistant with
Prof. Nancy Mitchell, who always provided an excellent example and wise counsel.
For opening their homes and sharing their memories, I also thank my interview subjects:
Kathleen Beggs, Bobby Edmonds, Ben Fortson, J.M. Holloway Jr., and Larry Pinson. I am
grateful as well to the Corps of Engineers staff at Clarks Hill/Thurmond Dam who welcomed
me over the past two years, in particular ranger David Quebedeaux, and to librarians Diane
Poteat in Lincolnton, Ga., and Paul Brown in McCormick, S.C.
iv
My wonderful parents, sisters and brother, and parents in-law helped carry me along
throughout this work. The confidence and love of my wife and children enabled me to start
on the path of exploring and teaching history. Their support has come in many forms, from
the countless errands and activities they did while I stayed home with my documents and
tapes, to their valiant efforts to show interest in an old dam somewhere in Georgia.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures .……………………………………………………………………………....vii
Introduction: ‘No Problem of Consequence’ in the Path of Clarks Hill ……………………...1
Chapter One: Origins – The River as a Missed Opportunity ………………………………..30
Chapter Two: Origins – FDR, Public Power, and Southern Democrats …………………….55
Chapter Three: Lasting Connections in a Transformed World ……………………………...82
Chapter Four: Negotiating the Edges of Federal Power …………………………………...107
Conclusion: Misled by Names ……………………………………………………………..133
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………….142
vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Map showing Savannah watershed and Clarks Hill Dam location ……………...2
Figure 2. Map of the “Fall Line” dividing the Piedmont and Coastal Plain ……………...37
Figure 3. The back porch and well of the old Reid Home, Lincoln County, Georgia ……83
Figure 4. Lincoln County, Ga., and vicinity in 1899, before Clarks Hill Dam …………..86
Figure 5. Martha Reid feeding baby chicks outside the Reid Home ……………………..88
Figure 6. Lincoln County, Ga., in 1970, after construction of Clarks Hill Dam …………97
Figure 7. Elijah Clark State Park, Ga., where James Fortson was superintendent ……...102
Figure 8. Clarks Hill Dam upon completion, with power plant and lines below dam …..134
vii
INTRODUCTION:
‘No Problem of Consequence’ in the Path of Clarks Hill Dam
The Savannah River was a blessing in many ways to the four Reid siblings, who lived
together in an old farmhouse of Georgia pine beams and boards their father had built, about a
quarter-mile from the river. The river drained the land on which they had raised corn, wheat,
cotton, hay, garden vegetables, and livestock for several decades, continuing into the 1940s.
Down a steep hill at the river bank, the Reids built a plain wooden landing from which they
and their frequent visitors could launch their bateaux and get on the water to fish or pole out
to a small island in the middle. Except when the river was low, they could hear the water
flowing over rocky shoals from their kitchen, porch or bedrooms at night, a sound that
perhaps helped take their minds off the stifling heat during the long summers, in a house that
1
never had electricity.
But the Savannah also proved a conduit for uninvited change and distress for the Reids,
when the federal government decided to dam the stretch of river that flowed near their farm.
In that sense, the river, with its inherent power for spinning turbines to generate electricity,
and also its history of occasionally flooding the city of Augusta, Ga., was a factor in forcing
the Reids from the home they had occupied their entire lives. Congress authorized a dam on
the Savannah River in 1944 near a scruffy, rail-side community in South Carolina called
Clarks Hill, a couple miles from the Reid farm and about twenty-two miles upstream of
1
Larry Pinson, interview by author, Lincoln County, GA, March 22, 2008; Larry Pinson, e-mail message to
author, March 18, 2008; all interview tapes in author’s possession.
1
Augusta. Contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started construction two years
later, but a political debate and the ebb and flow of congressional funding slowed the
construction, and it took until approximately 1951 for the project to start backing up the
Savannah’s water. The water level then climbed rapidly due to steady rains, and the dam
2
swelled a long stretch of the river and tributaries into the 71,000-acre Clarks Hill Lake.
Figure 1: Map showing Savannah watershed and Clarks Hill Dam location.
Savannah River Special Board, Report to President Roosevelt, 1936 (Note:
The scale listed on this map is incorrect).
2
Henry E. Barber and Allen R. Gann, History of Savannah District 1829-1989 (Savannah, GA: U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, 1989), 419-425; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, “Pertinent Data, J. Strom Thurmond Dam
and Lake,” fact sheet dated Dec. 19, 1997 (on file at Clarks Hill/Thurmond Dam and Lake Visitor Center,
Clarks Hill, S.C.).
2
