Fort Loudoun Dam

Fort Loudoun Dam is a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dam on the Tennessee River in East Tennessee. It impounds Fort Loudoun Lake at Lenoir City, Tennessee. This lake is the uppermost in the chain of nine TVA reservoirs that form a continuous navigable channel on the Tennessee River from Knoxville to Paducah, Kentucky, 652 miles (1049 km) away.

Capacity and dimensions

Fort Loudoun Dam is 122 feet (37 m) high and stretches 4,190 feet (1277 m) across the Tennessee River. The reservoir has 379 miles (610 km) of shoreline, 14,600 acres (59 km²) of water surface, and a flood storage capacity of 111,000 acre-feet (137,000,000 m³). The dam is equipped with a convert|60|ft|m|adj=on by convert|360|ft|m|adj=on lock that raises and lowers boats about convert|70|ft|m between Fort Loudoun Lake (upstream) and Watts Bar Lake (downstream). There are four hydroelectric generators at the dam with a combined generation capacity of 155.6 megawatts of electricity.

To augment Fort Loudoun's power production capacity, water from the Little Tennessee River is diverted into Fort Loudoun Lake via a short canal extending from Tellico Lake a short distance upstream of the nearby Tellico Dam.

History

Construction of Fort Loudoun Dam began in 1940 and was completed in 1943. It is named for Fort Loudoun, an 18th century British fort built during the French and Indian War. The fort was named for John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun, commander of British forces in North America at the time.

ee also

*Dams and reservoirs of the Tennessee River
*Tellico Dam

External links

* [http://www.tva.com/sites/fortloudoun.htm TVA: Fort Loudoun Reservoir]