Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area

The Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area is a United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

National Recreation Area is a designation for a protected area in the United States, often centered on large reservoirs and emphasizing water-based recreation for a large number of people. The first National Recreation Area was the Boulder Dam Recreation Area...

located in Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

and Tennessee

Tennessee

Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...

between Lake Barkley

Lake Barkley

Lake Barkley, a reservoir in Livingston, Lyon, and Trigg counties in Kentucky and extending into Stewart and Houston counties in Tennessee, was impounded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1966 upon the completion of Barkley Dam. Both the lake and the dam are named for Vice President Alben...

and Kentucky Lake

Kentucky Lake

Kentucky Lake is a major navigable reservoir along the Tennessee River in Kentucky and Tennessee. Created in 1944 by the Tennessee Valley Authority's impounding of the Tennessee River by Kentucky Dam, the lake is the largest artificial lake by surface area in the United States east of the...

. The area was designated a national recreation area by President

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

in 1963. The recreation area was originally managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority

Tennessee Valley Authority

The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...

but jurisdiction has since been transferred to the United States Forest Service

United States Forest Service

The United States Forest Service is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass...

Geography

The Tennessee

Tennessee River

The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names...

and Cumberland

Cumberland River

The Cumberland River is a waterway in the Southern United States. It is long. It starts in Harlan County in far southeastern Kentucky between Pine and Cumberland mountains, flows through southern Kentucky, crosses into northern Tennessee, and then curves back up into western Kentucky before...

Rivers flow very close to each other in the northwestern corner of Middle Tennessee

Middle Tennessee

Middle Tennessee is a distinct portion of the state of Tennessee, delineated according to state law as the 41 counties in the Middle Grand Division of Tennessee....

and Western Kentucky, separated by a rather narrow and mostly low ridge. The area of land that separates the two bodies of water by only a few miles became known as "Between the Rivers" since at least the 1830s or 1840s. After the Cumberland River was impounded in the 1960s and a canal

Canal

Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

was constructed between the two lakes, Land Between The Lakes became the largest inland peninsula

Peninsula

A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....

in the United States. Downstream from this area, the courses of the two rivers diverge again, with the mouth of the Cumberland emptying into the Ohio River

Ohio River

The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...

approximately 4 mi (7 km) from that of the Tennessee.

History

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

first began to have a major impact on the area when the Confederate

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

government built Fort Henry

Fort Henry

Fort Henry is the name of:*Fort Henry , a 1646 fort near present-day Petersburg, Virginia*Fort Henry , a 1774 fort near present–day Wheeling, West Virginia...

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

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

.) 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

Spanish-American War

The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...

and World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, was the formation of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Tennessee Valley Authority

as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

. The site of the last dam

Dam

A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...

downstream on the Tennessee was to be Gilbertsville, Kentucky

Gilbertsville, Kentucky

Gilbertsville is an unincorporated community in Marshall County, Kentucky, United States. Its elevation is 351 feet , and it is located at . It is known as the closest village to Kentucky Dam...

. The resulting impoundment, completed in the early 1940s, Kentucky Lake, flooded some of the low-lying land on the western side of the area, resulting in the condemnation

Eminent domain

Eminent domain , compulsory purchase , resumption/compulsory acquisition , or expropriation is an action of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner's consent...

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

United States Army Corps of Engineers

The United States Army Corps of Engineers is a federal agency and a major Army command made up of some 38,000 civilian and military personnel, making it the world's largest public engineering, design and construction management agency...

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. This 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 impoundment referred to as Lake Barkley, after Alben W. Barkley

Alben W. Barkley

Alben William Barkley was an American politician in the Democratic Party who served as the 35th Vice President of the United States , under President Harry S. Truman....

, a Kentuckian who had served as Vice President

Vice President of the United States

The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...

under President Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

. 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

American Bison

The American bison , also commonly known as the American buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds...

range, and a recreated 1850-style farm called "The Homeplace", complete with an on-site staff simulating life 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 Tennessee portion was renamed from State Route 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 shotgun

Shotgun

A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...

s, determined to stop the condemnation, but beyond perhaps a few punctured tire

Tire

A tire or tyre is a ring-shaped covering that fits around a wheel rim to protect it and enable better vehicle performance by providing a flexible cushion that absorbs shock while keeping the wheel in close contact with the ground...

s little actual violence ever occurred. The former settlements of Tharpe, Tennessee, Model, Tennessee, and Golden Pond, Kentucky

Golden Pond, Kentucky

Golden Pond is a ghost town in western Trigg County, Kentucky, United States. The town is located in the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area west-southwest of Cadiz. Golden Pond was established in the 19th century and became known for its moonshining activity during Prohibition...

were forcibly abandoned. The remains of a former iron furnace, manned in the 1850s by slave

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

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

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

, a planetarium

Planetarium

A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...

, 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

Deregulation

Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces.Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces.Deregulation is the removal or...

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 in 1998 it transferred operation of the area to the U.S. Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture

United States Department of Agriculture

The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...

. 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 has not succeeded.

External links

Land Between The Lakes - U.S. Forest Service official site
LandBetweenTheLakes.com - Camping, hiking and map information
Land Between the Lakes Information - on KentuckyLake.com
LBL at ExploreKentuckyLake.com
Friends of LBL - Land Between The Lakes Association
LBL area information site
LBLGuide.com - Informational site about LBL and the surrounding area

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.