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The Ocoee River ran uninterrupted until 1913, when a dam was built to generate power, broke free in 1976, hosted Olympic events in 1996, and is now guaranteed to run free for about 100 days a year for the next 15 years.
Last April, the Tennessee mountain river that once was dammed and drained, slow-flowed and nearly forgotten got new life when the Tennessee Valley Authority, the State of Tennessee, and a group of outfitters reached a 15-year agreement to keep the river running freely for over 100 days per year.
The Ocoee, a tributary of the Hiwassee that flows north from Lumpkin County, Georgia, to Polk County, Tennessee, ran uninterrupted for millennia, until 1913, when the Tennessee Power Company dammed the river to generate power for the region and nearby Chattanooga.
While the rest of the world fought two World Wars, endured the Great Depression, saw 12 men walk on the Moon and learned the jitterbug, the Ocoee was safely packed away in a wooden flume in rural southeast Tennessee.
A lot had changed by 1976, when a rockslide destroyed the flume and gave the river her first taste of freedom in more than 60 years.
Though adventurers made the first rafting expeditions in the American West in the early nineteenth century, whitewater rafting and similar adventure sports only started to take off in the 1960s and ‘70s. The Ocoee could not have chosen a better moment to begin its second act.
J.T. Lemons was among the first people to run the river.
“The first time I ever did the Ocoee was in late September of ’76,” he said. Lemons and some friends were passing through the area after visiting the Chattooga River near Cashiers, N.C.
“We had some kayaks and a raft with us, and there was enough daylight, so we tried it out.” After a successful trip down the river, Lemons found some investors and started Ocoee Outdoors, a local rafting outfitter that is still in business.
