TVA Fontana Dam Visitors Center — Attraction in Robbinsville

This is one of the most beautiful areas in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Beauty is only the start of why you should visit here. The historical significance of this facility built and operated by TVA in the forties of the previous decade is interesting and the accomplishments achieved by the building of this Dam in both economic boon for residential and business use is astounding and remains so today. A viable and highly visible part of the local economy in so many ways that it is hard to list all of them in this brief description however, when you visit and read the information made available to you there I'm sure you will readily see what I am speaking of and I guarantee you that it will peak your interest and educate you thoroughly on it's uses originally and including today. In short, it is an amazing facility part of President Roosevelt's Public Works programs of the mid twentieth century that helped this country win a war has provided cheap electricity to the residents and businesses of the area since...

Such a beautiful facility to visit. The drive over the dam is a great sight but much better viewed by walking across. It is only roughly a 1/4 mile and you wouldn't have to walk the whole way either. Plenty of parking on the overlook across the dam. There is a visitor center just before going across that again has plenty of parking. The gift shop was closed but there is one. The visitor center was open and manned by volunteers from BVI that were contagious in their enthusiasm about facts, not just the dam but the reasons for the location and even the needs for it. There are plenty of pictures and 3D effect art to describe the dam and region. There is a 360 degree observation deck on the roof of the visitors center that offers fantastic views. You can look down the tunnels, just barely, for the spillway water. There are four spillways that feed into two tunnels. You can see the relatively small motors that run through gear boxes to lift the spillwat gates and the very large chains that do...

In 1941 Alcoa aluminum made the government a gift of its Fontana property—a prime site for a TVA dam—in return for various considerations from TVA. A bill authorizing the construction of Fontana Dam was signed 10 days before Pearl Harbor. The dam construction began in 1942 and was completed in 1944 by a team of 5000 workers working in 3 shifts for 24 hours a day.

Located in Graham county in North Carolina, the Fontana dam is 480 feet high and stretches 2,365 feet across the Little Tennessee River. It is a gravity dam and contain 2,815,300 cubic yards of concrete. It is the tallest dam east of the Mississippi and forms 29 mile long Fontana lake.

There is a nice informative center with a pictorial history of the dam and the TVA. Good place to bring children.

There's a beautiful picnic spot with a beautiful view of the dam when you drive across the dam and veer left. It is...