Tims Ford State Park

The Tennessee Valley Authority finished Tims Ford Dam in 1970 to control repeated flooding on the Elk River, and the lake it made covers about 10,700 acres at the foot of the Cumberland Plateau. The state park opened on the shore in September 1978 and has grown to 3,546 acres, with cabins, a campground, a marina, one of the largest swimming pools in the state park system, hiking and mountain-bike trails, and a Bear Trace golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus that opened in 1999.

Before the dam this was Cherokee (Tsalagi) and Chickasaw country. The two nations ceded the Elk River valley by treaty in the first years of the 1800s, and Franklin County was organized in 1807 after the Cherokee claims here were extinguished. Settlers then floated cotton down the Elk toward New Orleans, though the land proved better for corn, wheat and livestock, and the river kept flooding.

Anglers know the lake as one of the Bill Dance Signature Lakes, noted for bass. The park keeps a visitor center and an aviary, a pier built for fishing, all-terrain wheelchairs for the paved trails, and a blueway paddle trail map for the lake's coves.