Norris Lake, also known as Norris Reservoir, is a

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

, US. The lake was created by the

Norris Dam Norris Dam is a hydroelectric and flood control structure located on the Clinch River in Anderson County and Campbell County, Tennessee, United States. The dam was the first major project for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had been creat ...

at the Cove Creek Site on the

Clinch River The Clinch River is a river that flows southwest for more than through the Great Appalachian Valley in the U.S. states of Virginia and Tennessee, gathering various tributaries, including the Powell River, before joining the Tennessee River in ...

in 1936 by the

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...

(TVA) for flood control, water storage, and

hydroelectric power Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is Electricity generation, electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies 15% of the world's electricity, almost 4,210 TWh in 2023, which is more than all other Renewable energ ...

. Norris Dam and its reservoir were the first major project taken on by the TVA. The lake, the dam, and the town of

Norris, Tennessee Norris is a city in Anderson County, Tennessee. Its population was 1,599 at the 2020 census. It is included in the Knoxville, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area. Norris was built as a model planned community by the Tennessee Valley Authority (T ...

are named for

George W. Norris George William Norris (July 11, 1861September 2, 1944) was an American politician from the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. He served five terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican, from 1903 until 191 ...

, who was a

U.S. Senator The United States Senate is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and House have the authority under Article One of the ...

from

Nebraska Nebraska ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Ka ...

and who wrote the legislation that created the TVA.

History

Norris Lake was created by the Norris Dam, which was the first project taken on by the TVA as part of the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

. Construction began in 1933, and the project was finished in March 1936. The dam cost about $36 million to build. The dam is 265 feet (80.7 m) high, and extends 1,860 feet (567 m) across the

. Construction of the dam also created the nearby town of Norris which was created to house the workers and their families. Norris Dam was primarily built for

flood control Flood management or flood control are methods used to reduce or prevent the detrimental effects of flood waters. Flooding can be caused by a mix of both natural processes, such as extreme weather upstream, and human changes to waterbodies and ru ...

in the area and it still serves that purpose today. The dam also provides electricity with two generating units, each having a generating capacity of 65.7

megawatts The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named in honor o ...

(a combined generating capacity of 131.4 megawatts). The

power plant A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...

generated about 302 gigawatt-hours in 2007. The dam and its reservoir have a flood storage capacity of about 1,113,000

acre-feet The acre-foot is a non- SI unit of volume equal to about commonly used in the United States in reference to large-scale water resources, such as reservoirs, aqueducts, canals, sewer flow capacity, irrigation water, and river flows. An acre- ...

(1,373,000,000 m^3 or 1.37 km^3). Norris Lake extends about 73 miles (117 km) up the Clinch River and 56 miles (90 km) up the Powell River from Norris Dam. It has a flood storage capacity of about 1,113,000 acre-feet (1.37 km^3), and it has about 800 miles of shoreline and 52.9 square miles (33,840 acres) of water surface. The lake has a maximum width of about 1.2 miles and a maximum depth of 210 feet, and these make it the largest lake on a tributary of the

Tennessee River The Tennessee River is a long river located in the Southern United States, southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. Flowing through the states of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, it begins at the confluence of Fren ...

. As of 2011, Norris Lake has an ecological health rating of fair. The TVA has put into effect a clean water initiative to improve the cleanliness of the lake.

Hydrology

Norris Lake has an average temperature of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.7 C) in the spring, 83 degrees (28.3 C) in the summer, 56.5 degrees (13.6 C) in the fall, and 36 degrees (2.2 C) in the winter. Its region receives an average rainfall of about 4.6 inches (117 mm) per month. The lake level is at about 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level, depending on the fluctuation of the depth of the lake, with an average input level of about 1,500 to 2,500 feet (457 to 762 m) above sea level, and an average output level of about 1,000 to 1,500 feet (300 to 457 m) above sea level. There is also an average water fluctuation of about 46 feet (14 m), day by day.

Geology

Norris Lake lies in the

Great Appalachian Valley The Great Appalachian Valley, also called The Great Valley or Great Valley Region, is one of the major landform features of eastern North America. It is a gigantic trough, including a chain of valley lowlands, and the central feature of the Appal ...

of East

and its shore land covers about 375 square miles around the 52.9 square miles that the reservoir covers. The main rock formations in the land are

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

and

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

, and because of the shifting of the land of the area, they are visible in many of the rock formations that are cut out in the hills.

Natural history

Fish

Most nutrients for the fish that inhabit the lake come from the Clinch and Powell Rivers because the lake has difficulty creating its own. This is the major reason that the fish population in Norris lake is not as abundant as in other lakes in the area such as

Boone Lake Boone Lake is a reservoir in Sullivan and Washington counties in northeastern Tennessee, formed by the impoundment of the South Fork Holston River and Watauga River behind Boone Dam.black bass Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''Psy ...

, the

striped bass The striped bass (''Morone saxatilis''), also called the Atlantic striped bass, striper, linesider, rock, or rockfish, is an anadromous perciform fish of the family Moronidae found primarily along the Atlantic coast of North America. It has ...

crappie Crappies () are two species of North American freshwater fish of the genus ''Pomoxis'' in the family Centrarchidae (sunfishes). Both species of crappies are popular game fish among recreational anglers. Etymology The genus name ''Pomoxi ...

walleye The walleye (''Sander vitreus'', Synonym (taxonomy), synonym ''Stizostedion vitreum''), also called the walleyed pike, yellow pike, yellow pikeperch or yellow pickerel, is a freshwater perciform fish native to most of Canada and to the Northern ...

, and sunfish.

Vegetation

Norris Lake has little underwater vegetation. Stumps remain underwater from the construction of the reservoir. The

Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) is an independent state agency of the state of Tennessee with the mission of managing the state's fish and wildlife and their habitats, as well as responsibility for all wildlife-related law enforce ...

(TWRA) has a program established to sink old Christmas trees to provide underwater structure for fish attraction. The vegetation type around Norris lake is known as Appalachian oak forest. The main type of forest vegetation is oak pine which includes black jack oak,

chestnut oak ''Quercus montana'', the chestnut oak, is a species of oak in the white oak group, ''Quercus'' sect. ''Quercus''. It is native to the eastern United States, where it is one of the most important ridgetop trees from southern Maine southwest to ...

post oak ''Quercus stellata'', the post oak or iron oak, is a North American species of oak in the white oak section. It is a slow-growing oak that lives in dry areas on the edges of fields, tops of ridges, and also grows in poor soils, and is resistant ...

scarlet oak ''Quercus coccinea'', the scarlet oak, is a deciduous tree in the red oak section ''Lobatae'' of the genus ''Quercus'', in the family Fagaceae. It is primarily distributed in the central and eastern United States. It occurs on dry, sandy, usual ...

, and

southern red oak ''Quercus falcata'', also called southern red oak, spanish oak, bottomland red oak or three-lobed red oak is an oak (part of the genus ''Quercus''). Native to the southeastern United States, it gets its name the "Spanish Oak" as these are the ar ...

inhabiting the areas that are drier. The areas around the lake that have more moist ground include trees such as

white oak ''Quercus'' subgenus ''Quercus'' is one of the two subgenera into which the genus ''Quercus'' was divided in a 2017 classification (the other being subgenus ''Cerris''). It contains about 190 species divided among five sections. It may be calle ...

, and black oak with short leaf pine composing much of the canopy around the lake.

Economy

The counties that surround the reservoir had a combined population of about 189,150 people in 2013. The main source of industry of the area surrounding the lake is

agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

, with the main cash crops being

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

corn Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout Poaceae, grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago ...

, and

hay Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticate ...

. Other sources of income for the area are in the industries of

garment Clothing (also known as clothes, garments, dress, apparel, or attire) is any item worn on a human human body, body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin s ...

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...

, and

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

.^{1/sup>

Norris Lake offers many recreational opportunities. It has several conservation lands such as Norris Dam State Park, The Cove Creek Wildlife Management Area, and Chuck Swan State Forest that offer hiking and other activities and protect undeveloped areas. The lake is also used for activities like waterskiing

Water skiing (also waterskiing or water-skiing) is a surface water sport in which an individual is pulled behind a boat or a cable ski installation over a body of water, skimming the surface on one or two skis. The sport requires sufficien ...
, fishing, swimming, and boating.

References

{{authority control

Reservoirs in Tennessee
Protected areas of Anderson County, Tennessee
Protected areas of Campbell County, Tennessee
Protected areas of Claiborne County, Tennessee
Protected areas of Grainger County, Tennessee
Protected areas of Union County, Tennessee
Bodies of water of Anderson County, Tennessee
Bodies of water of Campbell County, Tennessee
Bodies of water of Claiborne County, Tennessee
Bodies of water of Grainger County, Tennessee
Bodies of water of Union County, Tennessee
1936 establishments in Tennessee}