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Sunday, January 17, 2021

Walker Mill Hydroelectric Station - Sevierville, TN

Walker Mill Hydroelectric Station - Sevierville, TN

I might be the only person who would go to the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area and look for a century old spillway.
This dam in Sevierville is on the National Register of Historic Places. Here is the text from its 1990 NRHP nomination form:

The Walker Mill Hydroelectric Station is located in Sevier County (population 41,418) on the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River at mile 2.5, and just off U.S. Highway 441.

The dam is a concrete gravity structure approximately 227 feet long and eleven and five-tenths (11.5) feet high. It features an uncontrolled spillway section 115 feet in length.

The steel reinforced concrete powerhouse substructure and brick powerhouse measures forty (40) feet by twenty (20) feet and is located on the dam approximately fifty (50) feet from the right abutment. One tapered concrete pillar extends from the river helping supporting the powerhouse's northwest corner. The intake is an opening in the powerhouse headwall which is controlled by two gates. The water conductor is a simple open flume.

The Walker Mill Hydroelectric Station is significant under National Register criterion C for engineering because it represents the kind of hydroelectric engineering projects typical at the time of its construction on the smaller rivers of the State of Tennessee. Its design, while not unique among its class in the Volunteer State, displays the typical vertical emphasis of what can be called "early hydro-style." It, along with another now demolished site, provided the electric needs of the town of Sevierville until 1938 when the TVA acquired the station. It is capable of operation today when the water level is high enough.

The Walker Mill Hydroelectric Station is likewise significant under National Register criterion A, as it represents a change in the business of trading, commerce, services and commodities, and the gradual introduction of electricity into everyday human existence during the early twentieth century in Tennessee.

Initial interest in a hydroelectric facility was expressed in Sevierville in 1912. On October 28, 1914, the concrete dam was finished, and by November of that year the facility began generating electricity. Local competition flourished and soon there were two hydroelectric stations on the West Prong of Pigeon Forge River, one at the Newport Milling Company site, the other at the Walker Mill site. By 1938 the TVA had purchased both sites and by 1940 sold them back to city of Sevierville which would buy its power from TVA and extend its own system to local rural areas. Only the Walker Mill site is extant and occasionally in operation when the river level is adequately high.

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