History
The Falling Water River was harnessed to power gristmills during the 19th century. In 1921, the City of Cookeville began building Burgess Falls Dam to supply the city with electrical power. In late June 1928, a massive flood along the river caused part of the dam to collapse, and destroyed the powerhouse downstream. The dam was rebuilt, and continued supplying the city with electricity until 1944, when the city started purchasing electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Cookeville built the City Lake Dam in 1946 to provide the city with a steady source of water. Center Hill Dam was completed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1948.
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“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)