The Land Between the Lakes Tenn,KY.

Ricci.Wright · February 09, 2020 16:32

Just starting a new book on some KY. Tenn. history and read something about the Land between the Lakes and what the Government did to the 2500 people who lived there in the 1960's. They were told to leave so their land could be turned into a big ol camp ground:<P>

"In 1964 TVA began to condemn 170,000 acres between Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley to construct the Land Between the Lakes, a national recreation area that was intended to attract 10 million visitors a year. Consequently, the almost 2500 residents who lived between the two lakes were relocated out of—in the words of a TVA official—their “rural slum.” A relocation specialist knocked on many doors with the price TVA would pay for their home and a promise that their land would only be used for “recreation, education and demonstration.” TVA saw the plan as win-win: the residents would receive a windfall of money, be lifted out of a poverty-stricken area and at the same time, the eastern half of America would be given an idyllic natural playground to get back in touch with the spirit of the American frontier. <P>

After LBL was completed, the throngs of visitors never appeared. In its busiest year, LBL served around one million people. The close-knit community that had lived and farmed the area for six to seven generations had been dispersed in the name of progress and a future that never arrived, and many were left without land that had given them a livelihood. Thirty years later, TVA admitted defeat: In 1998, operational authority of LBL was transferred to the U.S. Forest Service. The USFS has now closed many of the campsites and other recreational aspects and is burning and clear-cutting parts of the wooded areas in a controversial bid to create pre-European savannas. Former residents are also concerned about access to their family cemeteries. A Tennessee man is currently awaiting sentencing in Federal Court in Nashville for terroristic threats to a federal officer after he threatened a USFS employee with bodily harm for removing the stakes for his dying uncle’s gravesite in the family cemetery in LBL. A dedicated group of former residents are leading a coalition against what they see as the dismantling of LBL and the commercial nature of some of the timber transactions. They do not want to feel their sacrifice—of both their property and community—was made in vain."<P>

I know this is just one side of the story but it just shows how the government can really screw up folk's lives. To read more: http://www.betweentheriversfilm.com/

The Land Between the Lakes Tenn,KY.

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