On Nov. 13, 1979, federal marshals arrived to evict the last families living along the Little Tennessee River as TVA prepared to close the flood gates of the Tellico Dam. Following the marshals were bulldozers that pushed down and buried their homes.

Those last families were honored at a "Tellico Dam Resisters" reunion Saturday at the Vonore Community Center as the sun glistened on the waters of Tellico Lake just across the road.

Feelings still run strong about what many considered was a land grab. The Tennessee Valley Authority bought nearly 38,000 acres with 16,000 of that now under the water of Tellico Lake. More than 300 families were displaced by the creation of the reservoir.
TVA paid most families $300 per acre for their land. Thirty years later a one-acre lot on the lake may sell for more than $250,000.

"Dam the TVA," Margaret McCall Sexton said, using a saying from back during the time the families were protesting. "I know that's not very lady like, but that's how I feel."
McCall's parents, Asa and Nellie McCall, lost their 90-acre farm near Greenback.
The landowners were not making much headway with the battle to keep their land, and Sexton said it was the discovery of the snail darter in the Little Tennessee River that gave them hope that things would change.

 "It could be the one legal thing that could stop the project," said Zyg Plater, the attorney who represented the families,
It was during a meeting in October 1974 after the discovery of the snail darter, that Asa McCall took off his hat and passed it around to collect money to start the legal battle that would gain nationwide media attention and eventually end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Asa's hat was on display at the reunion Saturday.

The snail darter was on the endangered species list and in 1978 the Supreme Court ruled work on the dam must stop, even though it was nearly complete. However, Congressmen Howard Baker and John Duncan Sr. added money for the project into an appropriations bill. President Jimmy Carter did not veto it.

Old pictures of Jean Ritchey show her wearing a banner stating "Carter betrayed us."
TVA bought the Ritchey family's 119-acre farm, but only three acres of it was to be flooded for the lake.
"We would write to Congress to try to find out why they wanted the whole place," Ritchey said. "They (Congress) didn't know."

Congress then asked TVA why.
"They never did tell us why. They just wanted the land to sell it," she said. "I went up and watched them crush our house and then buried it in a hole."
The Ritchey farm is now one of the lake communities and Jean Ritchey and her daughters return to their old home site each spring to pick the jonquils that still grow there.

"It will always be home, no matter who owns it," said Ritchey's daughter Carolyn.
Asa McCall died before the dam was completed, but his wife Nellie McCall kept up the fight until federal marshals arrived to escort her from her home.
Sexton said TVA had sent trucks and movers, but the movers quit at 5 p.m. and whatever was left was burned with the house. She has pictures of her mother sorting through the rubble. One shows Nellie holding a leg from a table that Asa had built.

"It was the most atrocious, unfair, pork barrel project I've ever heard of," said Sexton.
When asked what she thinks about all the changes 30 years later, Sexton said, "I don't think it's any improvement. I think a lot of people realize what a mistake it was."
Vonore City Judge Thomas B. Moser was the last to leave his home. "It was like waiting to die," he was quoted as saying during the days leading up to his eviction.

TVA bought Moser's home and five acres, although only about a third of it ended up under the lake water. Each year during the week he was forced from his home, Moser returns to his old homesite, just down the road from the Vonore Communtiy Center.

A CBS news broadcast on Nov. 13 showed scenes of Moser standing on his porch, walking out and hugging his dog, then getting in his car and driving away.
 "It's a hell of a country," he said.
Today, Moser acknowledges there are more jobs in Vonore now, but he still thinks too much land and history was sacrificed.

Attorney Zyg Plater said there were many aspects of the fight that went unreported, including an alternate plan that provided for tourism, industry and would have allowed the farmers to stay on their land.
"People around here never heard about that. It was good ecology, good economics and it could have saved the river," he said.
The Cherokee filed a last-minute lawsuit protesting the flooding of their ancesteral lands, but were defeated. The flood gates were closed on Nov. 29, 1979.

The families were presented certificates "in recognition of your relentless and courageous effort to halt the needless destruction of your home, your community and the Little Tennessee River and its valley."
Look for more coverage of the 30th anniversary of the Tellico Dam in the Nov. 29 edition of The Advocate & Democrat.

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