Reviewed by: Caleb Turrentine
100 years of the Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals
Reading time: 3 minutes
2024 marks an entire century of the Wilson Dam in the Shoals. The dam, located on the Tennessee River, was completed in the year 1924.
Its effects and history continue to make a mark on the area even 100 years later. Built to supply power for World War I, it was acquired by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) a few years later.
Keep reading for 100 years worth of history on the Wilson Dam.
The building of Wilson Dam
The Wilson Dam is the only neoclassical-style dam in the TVA system. The design of the dam incorporates ancient Greek and Roman architecture themes into the modern structure. The construction began in 1918, only a year after the United States entered into WWI. Plants were constructed in Muscle Shoals to create explosives for the war.
In order to supply power for the plants, the Wilson Dam was constructed. Even though the dam was constructed for WWI, the war ended before the dam could even start up it’s machines. Nine years after its’ completion, TVA acquired the dam when the corporation was established in 1933.
The facility
The dam is 137 feet tall and covers about 4,500 feet across the Tennessee River. The dam is oriented between the cities of Florence and Muscle Shoals from North to South. The Wilson reservoir covers over 160 miles of shoreline and about 15,500 acres of water surface.
The Wilson dam is a hydroelectric facility with 21 different generating units. Wilson is the largest conventional hydroelectric facility in the TVA system. In case of excess water or flooding, the dam is equipped with a flood-storage capacity of 50,000 acre-feet.
The main lock of the Wilson Dam holds the title of the highest single-lift lock east of the Rocky Mountain range, with a maximum lift of 100 feet. Around 3,700 vessels pass through the lock, on average, each year.
The Wilson Dam visitor center
If you want to visit the Wilson Dam yourself, you’re in luck. Not only are you able to drive across the Dam, but there is also a visitor center available to visit year round.
The visitor center of the dam offers a lookout area along with birding trails. Many avid bird watchers frequent the area due to the large amount of Gulls that hang around the dam.
The Wilson Dam visitor center:
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