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Removal of graves
Old Little Milligan
Present day Pioneer Landing Bridge
Pioneer Landing present day
R.R Butler
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1983 Shoe Store
Butler, TN - The Deep South
Butler was the largest single community, and the only incorporated town, removed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) throughout that entire massive, depression-era public works project to modernize and electrify the rural parts of seven southeastern United States. Butler was the commercial center for the Watauga Valley, in eastern Tennessee, and the only real town in the region, with a population of around 600. It was a typical southern town, with two barbershops, two beauty parlors, markets, the Blue Bird Cafe, hardware store, drug store, a few service stations, a few hotels, three churches, a rail station, Masonic lodge, a brick City Hall, bank, and doctors and dentists offices. Located in the forested hills of Appalachia, local industries were mostly wood related, and included a lumber company, a crating company, a furniture company, and a casket company. In 1948, when the floodgates were closed, the Watauga Dam and Reservoir began flooding 458 square miles along the Watauga River. 735 families had been displaced. Around 175 buildings, including shops, barns, churches and homes, were moved to higher ground, to a new town site named New Butler. Most buildings were demolished on site, and 1,200 bodies were moved from the graveyards. Some families opted to leave the graves of their ancestors undisturbed, so they are still there, along with a reported slave graveyard that TVA crews never found. When “Old Butler” was exposed in the 1983 drawdown conducted to service the dam, Don Stout’s shoe store, made of stone, and the one room jail house, made of concrete, stood out from the other foundations and building pads along the muddy streets, still lined with trees, long dead but preserved by the water. over
Present day Little Milligan
Entrance to Watauga Dam
Present day Fish Springs
Watauga Dam
Old Fish Springs
Flood of 1940
Suvivors of 1924 flood