East Tennessee

===Great Depression, TVA, and World War II===
[[Image:Norris Dam engineering blueprint.png|thumb|upright=1.1|[[Engineering drawing|Engineering plans]] for [[Norris Dam]] in [[Anderson County, Tennessee|Anderson County]], the first project completed by the [[Tennessee Valley Authority]] in 1936]]
Over a period of two decades, the [[Tennessee Valley Authority]] (TVA), created in 1933 at the height of the [[Great Depression]], drastically altered the economic, cultural, and physical landscape of East Tennessee. TVA sought to build a series of dams across the Tennessee River watershed to control flooding, bring cheap electricity to East Tennessee, and connect Knoxville and Chattanooga to the nation's inland waterways by creating a continuously navigable channel along the entirety of the Tennessee River. Starting with [[Norris Dam]] in 1933, the agency built 10 dams in East Tennessee (and five more across the border in North Carolina and Georgia) over a period of two decades. [[Melton Hill Dam|Melton Hill]] and [[Nickajack Dam|Nickajack]] were added in the 1960s, and the last, [[Tellico Dam]], was completed in 1979 after a [[Snail darter controversy|contentious five-year legal battle]] with environmentalists.<ref name=wheeler2>Bruce Wheeler, [http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1362 Tennessee Valley Authority].  ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002.  Retrieved: August 18, 2009.</ref> TVA also gained control of TEPCO's assets after a legal struggle in the 1930s with TEPCO president [[Jo Conn Guild]] and attorney [[Wendell Willkie]] that was eventually dismissed by the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]].<ref>Timothy Ezzell, [http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=579 Jo Conn Guild].  ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002.  Retrieved: August 18, 2009.</ref>

TVA's construction of hydroelectric dams in East Tennessee would receive criticism with for what some have perceived as excessive use of its authority of [[eminent domain in the United States|eminent domain]] and an unwillingness to compromise with landowners. All of TVA's hydroelectric projects in East Tennessee were made possible through the use of eminent domain<ref name="slatee" /><ref>{{Cite web|title=TVA|url=https://tennesseehistory.org/tva/|url-status=live|access-date=July 5, 2021|website=[[Tennessee Historical Society]]|date=March 13, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709185348/https://tennesseehistory.org/tva/ |archive-date=July 9, 2021 }}</ref> and required the removal of 125,000 Tennessee Valley residents.<ref name="gaventa">{{cite journal |author1=[[John Gaventa]] |title=Book Review, 'TVA and the Dispossessed: The Resettlement of Population in the Norris Dam Area' |journal=Tennessee Law Review |date=1982 |pages=979–983 |series=Symposium, the Tennessee Valley Authority |publisher=Tennessee Law Review Association |location=[[Knoxville, Tennessee]] |quote=Over the past fifty years the agency has had many opportunities to learn from its mistakes. Since 1933, over 125,000 residents have been displaced from their homesteads by TVA dam construction projects.}}</ref> Residents who refused to sell to the TVA were often forced by court orders and lawsuits.<ref name="slatee">{{cite news |last=Onion |first=Rebecca |date=September 5, 2013 |title=The Tennessee Valley Authority vs. the Family That Just Wouldn't Leave |url=https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/09/tennessee-valley-authority-the-agency-s-fight-against-one-family-that-wouldn-t-sell-their-farm.html |work=Slate Magazine |access-date=March 4, 2019}}</ref> Several dam projects inundated historic Native American sites and American Revolution-era towns.<ref>[[Jefferson Chapman]], ''Tellico Archaeology: 12,000 Years of Native American History'' (Tennessee Valley Authority, 1985).</ref><ref>Vicki Rozema, ''Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation'' (Winston-Salem: John F. Blair), 135.</ref> On some occasions, land that TVA had acquired through eminent domain that was expected to be inundated was not and was sold to private developers for the construction of planned communities such as [[Tellico Village, Tennessee|Tellico Village]] in Loudon County.<ref>{{cite news |last=Madden |first=Tom |date=July 2, 1981 |title=Private land TVA claimed for lake to be given away to developers |url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/07/02/Private-land-TVA-claimed-for-lake-to-be-given-away-to-developers/4201362894400/ |work=[[UPI]] |location=Boca Raton, Florida |access-date=March 4, 2019}}</ref>

East Tennessee's physiographic layout and rural nature made it the ideal location for the [[uranium enrichment]] facilities of the [[Manhattan Project]], the [[Federal government of the United States|U.S. federal government]]'s top secret [[World War II]]-era initiative to build the first [[nuclear weapon|atomic bomb]]. Starting in 1942, the [[U.S. Army Corps of Engineers]] built what is now the city of Oak Ridge, and the following year work began on the enrichment facilities, [[K-25]] and [[Y-12 National Security Complex|Y-12]].<ref name=oakridge /> During the same period, Tennessee Eastman built the [[Holston Army Ammunition Plant|Holston Ordnance Works]] in Kingsport for the manufacture of an explosive known as [[Composition B]],<ref>Patricia Brake, [http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1536 World War II].  ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002.  Retrieved: August 18, 2009.</ref> and the [[United States Department of Defense|Department of Defense]] constructed the [[Enterprise South Industrial Park|Volunteer Ordnance Works]] in Chattanooga to produce [[TNT]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Martin |first=John |date=May 4, 2020 |title=3 In Your Town: The Bunkers at Enterprise South Nature Park |url=https://www.wrcbtv.com/story/42084598/3-in-your-town-the-bunkers-at-enterprise-south-nature-park |work=[[WRCB-TV]] |location=Chattanooga |access-date=October 7, 2021}}</ref> The ALCOA corporation, seeking to meet the wartime demand for aluminum (which was needed for aircraft construction), built its North Plant, which at the time of its completion was the world's largest plant under a single roof.<ref>Russell Parker, "Alcoa, Tennessee: The Years of Change, 1940–1960." ''East Tennessee Historical Society Publications'' Vol. 49 (1977), pp. 99–117.</ref> To meet the region's skyrocketing demand for electricity, TVA hastened its dam construction, completing [[Cherokee Dam|Cherokee]] and [[Douglas Dam|Douglas]] dams in record time and building the massive [[Fontana Dam]] just across the state line in North Carolina.<ref>Tennessee Valley Authority, ''The Douglas Project: A Comprehensive Report on the Planning, Design, Construction, and Initial Operations of the Douglas Project'', Technical Report No. 10 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), 1–12, 28.</ref>