TVA's Chickamauga Dam

Inside the city limits of Chattanooga, Tennessee, on the north side of town, is Chickamauga Dam. It is 129 feet tall by 5,800 feet long, and was completed in 1940. This particular dam is very instrumental in protecting Chattanooga from the devastating floods that use to plague the area... just downstream is where the Tennessee River enters a natural bottleneck formed by Lookout Mountain and Signal Mountain, that would back up the very high floodwater flows (and which is why Nickajack Lake has no flood storage capacity).

This is a view of the lock on the far side of the river. The nominal lift is 48 feet.

A tighter view of the power house, with requisite crane.

A shot of the back side of the dam. Notice the two cranes snuggled in under the bridge over the dam.

The entrance to the powerhouse. We don't think there are any regularly scheduled tours available to the public, but they used to offer tours to school groups, at least. Pat was able to take one of the tours a bazillion years ago (without a camera, unfortunately).

The transformer/switchyard. Chickamauga is good for 128 Megawatts.

The transformers are not inside the powerhouse, as at some dams. Here you can see the much heavier conductors coming from the generators to the transformers, to be stepped up to 161 KV for distribution.

Here is a closeup of the nameplate on one of the transformers. You can almost read it! We'll try harder next time.

Here is the Riverboat "Francis R. Keegan" locking through with one barge. Chickamauga has the original 360x60 foot lock, so you have to do it one at a time! Jan kept saying that the name of the boat was familiar. When we got back home, we double-checked the pictures from the Wilson Dam quest, where we had caught a barge tow locking through. Sure enough, it was the same boat!

In between the barges going downriver, here is a pleasure craft coming upriver.

Chattanooga is a busy railroad town. Just downstream of the dam, this is a bridge with two sets of tracks crossing the river, where we caught this freight making a crossing. The towers on the far side support a drawbridge. You can also see some of the drawbridge in the shot of the riverboat above.