Center Hill Dam / Center Hill Powerhouse

The lake behind the dam is a flood-control reservoir first. Center Hill Lake is one of four major flood-control reservoirs on the Cumberland, with Percy Priest, Dale Hollow and Lake Cumberland. It covers about 18,000 acres and has some 415 miles of shoreline, and Edgar Evins, Burgess Falls and Rock Island State Parks hold parts of it. Its water covered the Caney Fork area and forced many farm families to move. DeKalb County's economy, long built on agriculture, changed after the war, and by the 1990s almost every farm family needed outside income.

What the plaque says

Center Hill Dam / Center Hill Powerhouse Center Hill Dam: Designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and built by private contractors, Center Hill Dam, 240 feet high and 2,160 feet long, impounds 64 miles of the Caney Fork River. Congress authorized the dam in 1938 to reduce flood damage in the Cumberland, Ohio, and Mississippi River valleys. Construction began in 1942, but was suspended in 1943 due to World War II. Work resumed in 1946, the same year that Congress authorized recreational use of the reservoir. Center Hill Dam was completed in 1951. Center Hill Powerhouse: Beginning in 1951 three hydropower turbine-generator units generated electricity. Water surges 160 feet from an intake on the reservoir to the units in the powerhouse. the generated power is transferred to the switchyard to distribute the electricity for public use. Collectively, the units have a capacity of 135,000 kilowatts, sufficient to provide electricity to a city of 125,000 people. The powerhouse's Art Deco-Art Moderne architecture is typical of the period 1942-1952, when the powerhouse was under construction.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Burgess Falls State Park — 13 mi
  A day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
• Cummins Falls State Park — 18 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.
• Cookeville Depot Museum — 18 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
• Rock Island State Park — 23 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.

More markers nearby

• Buffalo Valley School — 3.8 mi
• Last Stagecoach Hold-Up — 6.3 mi
• Battle of Snow Hill — 8.6 mi
• DeKalb County in the Civil War — 9.6 mi