History
The growth of industry in Chattanooga some 30 miles (48 km) west of the Ocoee River in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries required large amounts of electric power. Several private entities attempted to meet this demand by building dams that could produce hydroelectricity. In 1910, a group of financiers formed the Eastern Tennessee Power Company to use the Ocoee's hydro-power potential. ETPC completed Ocoee Dam No. 1 in late 1911, and work began on Ocoee Dam No. 2 the following year.
To build the dam, ETPC constructed a wooden "crib" made of 10-foot (3.0 m) by 10-foot (3.0 m) timbers, and filled the crib with stone. ETPC engineers realized that if the dam were built at the ideal powerhouse site, it would be unable to utilize the potential energy from the five-mile stretch immediately upstream in which the river drops 250 feet (76 m) in elevation. Engineers solved this dilemma by constructing the 5-mile (8.0 km) flume on the cliffs above the river gorge, which allows just a 19-foot (5.8 m) drop in the water level from the point at which it exits the reservoir to the point at which it spills through the pipes into the powerhouse below. At 14 feet (4.3 m) by 11 feet (3.4 m), the flume was unusually large for its day. The dam was completed in 1913, and its two generators went online in October of that year.
Read more about this topic: Ocoee Dam No. 2
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