Dams
The Beech River system is somewhat unusual in that it and all of its major tributaries (a total of eight) are impounded, one of them twice, primarily by dams built in the mid 20th century as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Beech River Project—Beech, Cedar, Dogwood, Lost Creek (which has no permanent reservoir), Pin Oak, Pine, Redbud, and Sycamore. The dams are purely for purposes of flood control and recreation, though it is possible that the relatively small volume of water they store could result in some minimal aid to navigation on the Tennessee under some conditions. Unlike most other TVA dams, none of the Beech River dams are used for hydropower, since the small size of the streams impounded and their relative lack of fall would make power generation impractical. Some of the lakes created are located in Natchez Trace State Park, the largest of the Tennessee state parks; though located many miles west of both the Natchez Trace Parkway and the historic Natchez Trace, this area is named for a branch of the historic Trace that bore that name in the area.
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