History

History The Imagination Station

A timeline of the creation of Lake Norman

COMPILED BY RENEE ROBERSON

THE MCGUIRE NUCLEAR STATION, NAMED FOR DUKE POWER PRESIDENT FROM 1959-1971 W.B. MCGUIRE, BEGAN OPERATING IN 1981.

Early 1900s

James B. Duke and Dr. W. Gil Wylie began brainstorming how a series of damns on the Catawba River could provide hydroelectricity to residents of the South.

Sept. 28, 1959

Duke Power (now Duke Energy) breaks ground on the Cowans Ford Dam.

1963

Bill Lee, the grandson of William S. Lee and the chairman of Duke Power Company, led the completion of the dam, which was completed at a length of 7,387 feet. The communities of two river crossings, Sherrill’s Ford and Beatty’s Ford are flooded, along with many original homesites, in order to complete the man-made Lake Norman.

1964

Duke Power offers more than 2,600 cottage sites with leases starting at $120 a year.

1990s

Charlotte’s thriving business environment attracts more and more residents to the shores of Lake Norman when they realize they can live in a lakeside retreat with only a 30 to 40-minute commute into the city.

Today

Lake Norman remains a peaceful respite for an extraordinary community of people.

Other notable facts:

The Long Island Mill, one of the earliest cotton mills in the American South, opened in the mid-1800s, and closed in 1959 before being covered by Lake Norman.

Underneath the lake are the remains of a summer camp that opened in 1938 and the site of the Battle of Cowan’s Ford, where General William Lee Davidson fought Lord Cornwallis in 1781. There are also old plantations, homesites and highways and an airplane discovered by firefighters using sonar in 2013.

Sources: VisitLakeNorman.org Lake Norman Our Inland by Sea by Bill and Diana Gleasner Images of America Around Lake Norman by Cindy Jacobs