History
Alcoa began developing the Little Tennessee Valley in 1909 to provide the enormous amounts of electricity needed to power to its aluminum smelting operations in Blount County. Superintendent I.G. Calderwood oversaw the extension of a railway line from Chilhowee to what is now Calderwood (railroad bridge support columns are still visible in the river just downstream from the dam). Southern Railway engineers had suggested that the construction of this rail line would take six months, but Calderwood and his team accomplished the task in just six weeks. The first of Alcoa's Little Tennessee Valley dams, Cheoah, was completed in 1919, and the second, Santeetlah, was completed in 1928. Preliminary work on Calderwood Dam began in 1918, but test drilling suggested the site might not be satisfactory. Subsequent tests confirmed the site's stability, however, and construction began in 1927. The first two generating units went into operation on June 22, 1930, and a third unit was added in 1938.
The "cushion pool" design of Calderwood was influenced by natural cascade waterfall formations. The dam's arched-crest design may have been influenced by the design of Ocoee Dam No. 1, which was completed in 1911 along the Ocoee River a few miles to the south. Calderwood's use of a conduit tunnel to carry water to a powerhouse further downstream resembles the Great Falls Dam complex, completed in 1916 on the Caney Fork in Middle Tennessee.
The community of Calderwood, Tennessee, located downstream from the dam and powerhouse, was developed in 1912 to house construction crews for Alcoa's Little Tennessee projects. This community was initially known as "Alcoa," but its name was changed to "Calderwood" in 1920 when the company reapplied its name to its main company town north of Maryville. The Calderwood community grew to include nearly two dozen houses, two churches, a school, and a theater, but as construction and maintenance crews were no longer needed, the community was largely abandoned in the 1950s. Its houses were all razed, but the school and theater (now used as storage) were added to Calderwood Dam's National Register listing in 2004.
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