For those with a long memory, there was a time when the Roanoke River was an open sewer. The refuse from a tannery in Salem was dumped into the river which effectively killed everything that might have lived there.
In Roanoke, Crystal Spring, which gushed forth from the base of Mill Mountain, was the pristine water supply for all of Roanoke before Carvin’s Cove was developed in the 1950s. I have often wondered how beautiful the area must have been before settlers moved in and the railroad changed the face of the area.
Even as far back at the 1920s there was talk of damming the river for hydroelectric purposes but the Depression and World War II halted those dreams. The areas that were to be flooded were small farms where tobacco was raised and pulp wood was harvested.
A ride down any country road in Franklin, Pittsylvania, and Bedford counties will show you countless tobacco barns of hand-hewn logs still standing. All are abandoned now and many half-hidden by vines. If you are interested in photographically preserving a bit of local history, you should do it now. In less than a decade, all of these classics will have disappeared, either to land development or decay.
When Appalachian Electric Power acquired the land for the proposed lake, a modicum of interest stirred in Roanoke. Few realized the economic impact that would be forthcoming but some were foresighted enough to acquire river property before it was fashionable to think of having a lake home. One gentleman of my acquaintance purchased a mile on the river for $25,000. It would be difficult to estimate the worth of that investment now.
The dam was started in 1960 and completed in 1963. It took until 1966 for the level to reach full pond, the great majority coming from the now sanitary Roanoke River and the Blackwater. Numerous smaller streams such as Craddock, Gill, and Bull Run made a lesser contribution to the now more than 500 mile shore line and the surface area of 20,600 acres or 83 km2; however you do the math, that’s a lot of water.
The whole lake is under the licensure of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a group about which much has been said in relation to the pipeline issues we now face, but AEP calls the shots on lake management.
The Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) controls what goes on in relation to the lake development. Those who own shoreline property have sometimes had the mistaken impression that they can build docks, boathouses, gazebos, and the like at their own discretion. Not so; the SMP has basically superseded local zoning laws and multiple levels of bureaucracy were introduced which has made the relationship of landowners and AEP sometimes contentious. But the lake is, after all, under their jurisdiction and not there just for the entertainment of the shoreline property owners.
It would take a long time to produce factual information about the economic good fortune that the lake has had on those rural counties that border it. The owners of the little farms sometimes did quite well in selling their land for lake development. The ramshackle tobacco barns stand as silent reminders of decades of hard times before the lake was completed. The number of jobs for home construction and associated industries has been a godsend to what was destined to become an even more depressed area as the tobacco, textile, and furniture markets all disappeared.
The trailer parks that populated the early lake scene have also faded and been replaced by fabulous homes which have provided countless jobs to support them. Boating, fishing, sailing, and water sports have proliferated exponentially. Many flee the torments of summertime Florida or the snowfall for the northeast for the relatively benign weather of SML.
Smith Mountain Lake is the largest lake in the state and has been the scene of a number of movies, the most famous of which was What About Bob?, starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss. Hollywood, in its wisdom, set the scene on an unpronounceable lake in New Hampshire. I guess Franklin County was a little too prosaic.
Opportunities still abound. Just this week a local developer, Ron Willard, who has been working there for years, has put Water’s Edge Country Club on the market. Unlike my friend of fifty years and his mile of shoreline for 25K, this is a little pricier, but worth a look.
What about the lake? It’s a grand asset for everyone.
Hayden Hollingsworth
