Pickwick Dam
| Pickwick Landing Dam | |
|---|---|
Pickwick Landing Dam from upstream
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| Official name | Pickwick Landing Dam |
| Location | Pickwick Dam, Hardin County, Tennessee, United States |
| Coordinates | 35°03′50″N 88°14′50″W / 35.06389°N 88.24722°WCoordinates: 35°03′50″N 88°14′50″W / 35.06389°N 88.24722°W |
| Construction began | March 1935 |
| Opening date | May 8, 1938 |
| Operator(s) | Tennessee Valley Authority |
| Dam and spillways | |
| Impounds | Tennessee River |
| Height | 113 ft (34 m) |
| Length | 7,715 ft (2,352 m) |
| Reservoir | |
| Creates | Pickwick Lake |
Pickwick Landing Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Hardin County, in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The dam is one of nine dams on the river owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the 1930s as part of a New Deal-era initiative to create a continuous navigation channel between the river's mouth and Knoxville, and bring economic development to the area. The dam impounds the 43,100-acre (17,400 ha) Pickwick Lake and its tailwaters are part of Kentucky Lake.
Pickwick Landing Dam is named for a community situated near the dam site at the time of construction. The community had been named after the title character in the Charles Dickens novel, The Pickwick Papers.
Pickwick Landing Dam is located nearly 207 miles (333 km) above the mouth of the Tennessee River, a few miles north of the point where the states of Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi meet. This stretch of the river is also a geological boundary between the scattered hills of the Western Highland Rim to the northeast and the flatlands of West Tennessee to the northwest. Most of the land just south of the dam and its immediate lakeshore is part of Pickwick Landing State Park, and Shiloh National Military Park is located a few miles to the north. Pickwick Lake stretches nearly 53 miles (85 km) to the base of Wilson Dam at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and includes parts of Hardin County in Tennessee, Lauderdale and Colbert counties in Alabama, and Tishomingo County in Mississippi. The area around Pickwick Landing Dam is sparsely populated, the nearest community of note being the small community of Counce, Tennessee 2 miles to the southwest. Tennessee State Highway 128 crosses the top of the dam, connecting the area to Savannah to the north.
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Wikipedia