Pickwick Landing Dam

Pickwick Landing Dam
Pickwick Landing Dam from upstream
Official namePickwick Landing Dam
LocationPickwick Dam, Hardin County, Tennessee, United States
Coordinates35°03′50″N 88°14′50″W / 35.06389°N 88.24722°W / 35.06389; -88.24722
Construction beganMarch 1935
Opening dateMay 8, 1938
Operator(s)Tennessee Valley Authority
Dam and spillways
ImpoundsTennessee River
Height113 ft (34 m)
Length7,715 ft (2,352 m)
Reservoir
CreatesPickwick Lake

Pickwick Landing Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Hardin County, in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The dam is one of nine dams on the river owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the 1930s as part of a New Deal-era initiative to create a continuous navigation channel between the river's mouth and Knoxville, and bring economic development to the area. The dam impounds the 43,100-acre (17,400 ha) Pickwick Lake and its tailwaters are part of Kentucky Lake.

Pickwick Landing Dam is named for a community situated near the dam site at the time of construction. The community had been named after the title character in the Charles Dickens novel, The Pickwick Papers.[1]

  1. ^ Tennessee Valley Authority, The Pickwick Landing Project: A Comprehensive Report on the Planning, Design, Construction, and Initial Operations of the Pickwick Landing Project, Technical Report No. 3 (Knoxville, Tenn.: Tennessee Valley Authority, 1941), pp. 1-11, 20, 249, 257, 272, 289.