Land Between the Lakes

Land Between the Lakes is a U.S. National Recreation Area located in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers flow very close to each other in the northwestern corner of Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky, separated by a rather narrow and mostly low ridge. This area where they are only a few miles apart had been known as "Between the Rivers" since at least the 1830s or 1840s. It was considered remote and rather backward even by the standards of the time. Even in more recent years (the mid-20th century), it was known for moonshining and fundamentalist religion, as well as still being rather remote and somewhat backward. Downstream from this area, the courses of the rivers then diverge again, with the result being that the mouth of the Cumberland into the Ohio River is approximately 40 mi (64 km) from that of the Tennessee.

Government first began to have a major impact on the area when the Confederate government built Fort Henry on the banks of the Tennessee, presumably to protect the upper reaches of that river from Union gunboats. (Initially, Kentucky had declared its neutrality in the American Civil War). When Fort Henry fell in early 1862, there was little more Civil War action in the area, which was judged to be too devoid of valuable war resources to deserve much attention from either side, and it went back to its somewhat isolated ways. The next major event in the area, other than calls for men to fight in the Spanish-American War and World War I, was the formation of the Tennessee Valley Authority as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The site of the last dam downstream on the Tennessee was to be Gilbertsville, Kentucky. The resulting empoundment, completed in the early 1940s, Kentucky Lake, flooded some of the lowlying land on the western side of the area, resulting in the condemnation of land and the forced removal of some area farmers. This was very unpopular with some of those affected, while others seemed happy to get an opportunity to sell their land and start a new life in a less remote area.

A plan was developed shortly after this to use the United States Army Corps of Engineers to dam the Cumberland in such a way that the two lakes would be at the same elevation, and the two streams could then be connected by a canal without the need for any locks, which would considerably lessen the shipping distances for goods going to ports on the Gulf of Mexico for products leaving the Cumberland Valley. This was completed in the 1960s and the resulting empoundment referred to as Lake Barkley, after Alben W. Barkley, a Kentuckian who had served as Vice President under President Harry S. Truman. But this plan called for far more than a new dam -- it called for the evacuation of the entire former "Between the Rivers" area, even though relatively a small amount of it was to be flooded. The area was to become Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area -- a TVA experiment designed to show a multiple-use approach to recreational lands. Unlike a national park, there were to be areas where hunting would be allowed. Over time, many other attractions were to be developed, such as a buffalo range, and a recreated 1850-style farm called "The Homeplace", complete with an on-site staff living on the farm in period costume and working it using period agricultural techniques. (Both of these attractions were added in the 1970s.) The road through the area was renamed from Tennessee Highway 49 to "The Trace", which is what many roads and paths were called in pioneer times.

All of this came with a large price, human as well as financial. A great number of the area residents resented immensely the condemnation of their lands, especially when it was explained to them that most of the area was not to be flooded but rather to become a park. Some felt that they were being singled out as the mostly-impoverished and poorly educated of society to be taken advantage of by their government. Several even armed themselves with shotguns, determined to stop the condemnation, but beyond perhaps a few punctured tires little actual violence ever occurred. The former settlements of Tharpe, Tennessee, Model, Tennessee, and Golden Pond, Kentucky were forcibly abandoned. The remains of a former iron furnace, manned in the 1850s by slave labor, are about all that remains of Model. Golden Pond was replaced by the headquarters of the area and retained as the postal address for it. There is a museum, a planetarium, and an environmental education area there.

The area has many miles of hiking trails, many boat ramps, an off-road vehicle area, many campgrounds, and group lodges and a few cabins. Most of the activities other than overnight lodging were initially "free"; now most have a "user fee".

In the 1990s, the directors of the TVA made the decision to get out of most activities requiring direct taxpayer funding. This was allegedly done in order to pare down the agency to essentially its electrical-generating function in order to prepare for the deregulation of energy markets; critics said (with some reason) that this violated the spirit and probably even the letter of the original 1933 Act establishing the agency. Nonetheless, Land Between the Lakes became just the sort of "non-core" operation that the TVA was looking to shed, and it transferred operation of the area to the Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Upon learning of this plan, many of the area's original inhabitants and their descendants and heirs began to lobby for the return of most or all of the area to their ownership on the grounds that it was no longer being used for the purpose given when it was condemned; so far this argument, not without merit, has not succeeded.