What about the TVA? Seems like when I was in school we studied how many people were displaced by the Tenessee Valley Authority to build a dam in the Ozarks? – some mountain range there. It was a big deal at the time, and I thought that was what prompted the – very surreal – flooding scene in “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou”.
Is that too far in the past (30’s, I think) to bother with these days, or was it displacement and flooding for some other reason?
If you enjoy the Coens and David Lynch, then it might be your cup of tea. Atmosphere and image definitely took centerstage over logic and plot, but in this kind of movie I don’t see that as necessarily a negative.
I really like The Onion A.V. Club review, and Nathan expressed what I liked about the move much better than I can.
There’s the Tuttle Creek dam near Manhattan, Kansas.
In 1961 or '62 (not sure), my parents and I went to Ft. Riley to visit my brother. My folks were fun to travel with, always veering off to places that looked interesting. Somehow, we ended up driving around this soon-to-be-flooded area. We didn’t know until we came to a small bridge that had fallen and not been replaced that maybe we were really in the boonies.
It was also my first experience with cicadas. One got in the car (windows down, no AC in those days) and scared the bejesus out of me.
There’s a newer movie involving a flooded town, or maybe just a flooded house. I think the word “dream” is in the title, maybe? Quite spooky.
They have photos of every property that got flooded in the vaults at the Quabbin. It was really something to flip through them, and see what used to be there.
As long as we’re spouting off movies about towns getting flooded by dam construction, how about O Brother, Where Art Thou. It’s not a central plot point, but it is a handy deus ex machina at the end of the film.
I’m surprised he missed this town. In 1938, the Tygart Lake Dam was constructed near Grafton, WV. One of the towns that was flooded by the new lake was:
Cecil, WV
And the reverse effect with this movie Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) - IMDb
If anyone knows the movie and how to do spoiler tags, please feel free to explain this.
Heck, when I was a kid an old Spanish colonial town of Falcon disappeared with the building of the dam of the same name (South Texas).
In this case some valuable stuff may have been left behind. The dam was completed in 1952 but the water was expected to take a few years before it lapped at the town. Then in August, 1953 they got the Mother of all Rains that hit the 500 year flood plain. Villagers had to flee and some left behind a lifetime of possessons.
Cecil mentions Lake Shasta flooding the town of Kennet. Actually, there were 8 towns and villages submerged by that lake, including one of my favorite placenames: Ydalpom.
Why is it a favorite? Try spelling it backwards.
Quite. I’d like to see “consists largely of mud-covered masonry and the occasional shard of Fiestaware” as the new forum description for Great Debates.
The reservoir at Pitlochry in Scotland is drained somewhat for cleaning every quarter of a century. The old buildings and a few vintage vehicles can be seen. I missed the last one - only 14 years to go til the next!
The various dams on the Columbia River resulted in many towns being flooded/relocated. Arlington OR (birthplace of Doc Severinsen) was relocated to a higher elevation when the John Day Dam was built.
By fave is North Bonneville WA. Built to house workers during the construction of the Bonneville Dam in the 1930s. And of course they built it high enough. For several decades anyway. When they decided to increase the capacity of Bonneville in the 1970s, the town had to be moved to higher ground.
The dams giveth and the dams taketh away.
In the Eastern US, many the reservoirs are so shallow that the structures have to be flattened to reduce hazards to boating. Hardly making underwater ghost towns.
The city of Kernville, California near Bakersfield was rebuilt new after a dam was built and flooded the old town. Everyone had plenty of time and warning before and while the dam was being built and the government made sure everyone’s home was replaced in the “new” Kernville some miles away.
Several little towns were lost by the impoundment of Lake Barkley, and later, Kentucky Lake. One of them, Golden Pond, was pretty well known as a bootlegging center where local illicit distillers made corn liquor which was transported to Chicago (up Highway 41) by gangsters.
Incidentally, if you like outdoorsy/lake type stuff, the Western Kentucky lake area (Ky Lake, Lake Barkley, Land Between the Lakes) is a great place to visit. Huge lakes, huge federally maintained recreation area, pretty much unspoiled. Also, another fascinating area, Reelfoot Lake, is about 90 minutes away.
Dangit, I knew I was missing one! :smack:
When you’re on this topic, it’s sort of hard to beat the mystique and romance of the lost town of Monte Ne, in northwest Arkansas just east of Rogers.
Monte Ne was the brainchaild of William H. “Coin” Harvey: mining tycoon, would-be political, social, and economic reformer, and borderline crackpot. It was intended as a health resort, and at one time included an impressive bank building, a pair of hotels (including the so-called “Oklahoma Row”, reputed to be the largest log structure in the world), an amphitheatre, and a lagoon that connected the amphitheatre with the hotels via gondolas, which also served to bring guests to the hotels from the terminus of the railroad Harvey built out to the site.
All of this eventually came to the end that such things do, the buildings began their long, slow decline, and the wilderness began to reclaim parts of it. Then in the early 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers built the dam on the White River that would create Beaver Lake, which would result in the flooding of most of what had been Monte Ne. Part of what had been Oklahoma Row was moved a couple of miles away to higher ground, where it remains today. By the time the water reached the intended level, only the stone tower that formed one end of Oklahoma Row remained above water level.
The Monte Ne ruins have been popular with fishermen ever since, and the site is the location of a heavily used boat launch ramp where the highway runs down to the lake – the ramp is just a few feet to the east of some of the old foundation walls, which are often visible under the surface when the lake water is particularly clear. On several occasions since, however, unusually low water levels have caused portions of the site (in particular, the amphitheatre) to reappear above water – the pages linked above and below have lots of pictures of this from 1977, 1980, and 2005/2006. I was visiting my parents in the area in 2006, and since the boat launch is the one my dad uses most often, when he took my kids out fishing on the lake, that’s where we went and I was able to see many of the ruins that I had not seen since 1977, just after we moved to the area.
Within the last few years, maybe a decade or so, the lake level was falling and the town popped back up.
More about Falcon here.
Some other stories here.
“Once upon a time, at the turn of the century, there was a quaint little town along the Mohawk River. Delta, NY, near Rome, is now underwater after Delta Dam was built on the Mohawk River and the town was flooded to make a reservoir, now known as Delta Lake.”
See some great photos of this town before it took the big bath: