Colorful view at Lake Santeetlah near Robbinsville, North Carolina. #autumn #fall #fallcolor #fallfoliage #lakesanteetlah #santeetlah #nc129 #robbinsville #NC #northcarolina #appalachia #ashevillephotography #camiphoto (at Lake Santeetlah)
Beautiful fall reflection at Lake Santeetlah in the Nantahala National Forest near Robbinsville, North Carolina. #autumn #fall #fallcolor #fallfoliage #lakesanteetlah #santeetlah #nantahala #nationalforest #grahamcounty #nc129 #dealsgap #robbinsville #NC #northcarolina #visitnc #appalachia #ashevillephotography #camiphoto (at Lake Santeetlah)
Untroubled, sedate, composed—each similar in sense, though distinguishable if pressed: the “un-“ of “untroubled” strong in its assertation of the end of problems in a way different from “sedate” whose calm could degrade to something dull if not insipid; “composed” then is a term between the other two, one that has not fully negated its anxieties nor one that has become so unaware of them as to potentially fall (or rather stall) into some inactive state. Each word is apt for an area in this postcard of Lake Santeetlah. The forested hills, plump and green, are “untroubled”, the waters barely rippling “sedate” and the dam’s cool curved neoclassical arch of concrete, “composed”. However, the feeling of the whole image does not settle fully into any of these kinds of calm but becomes (the more you look into and not just at the image) something grander than calm, an ease stemming more so from capaciousness rather than contentment, for while the versicolor branches at the edge of the image hint at something of a human scale (while also obscuring the dam’s abutment), the view beyond them is tremendous—sky, valley, mountain, lake each extending well beyond what the implied person near the trees can see. The only delimiting (though not wholly delimited) thing within the frame is the dam’s architecture, ambitious enough to girdle the flow of water and bind itself to mountainside. Positioned as it is, the dam looks like the pool wall of waters where titans will step down over the tree line to bathe and swim in deific ease and immortal glory.
Afterwards, perhaps they dry on the downstream elevation of the dam whose spillways can be imagined as a very grand grandstand, every few rows of seats wide enough to fit a building such as the one at left-edge.
But seats are just one part of a stadium, there is also the field to which all the seats are situated, though here the simile just offered fails, for diagrammatic elevations, as historians of architecture often lament, rarely integrate their representations to their surrounds. It is true that here the mountainsides which the dam abuts in order to hold itself up and hold water back are depicted, but where the water goes that comes over the crest and down the spillways is as unrepresented as the water itself. This is unlike the postcard where the water takes up more space than the dam which is fully integrated—by form and color—into its setting. But postcards and elevations are, of course, different kinds of images; the former offers a view of Santeetlah Dam as a landscape, perfected in its relations to other features of that landscape, while the elevation of Santeetlah Dam offers a view onto an object, perfected in itself, implaced nowhere in particular. The two ends are not at odds, but rather form a continuum that contain and pass over another kind of image—photographs of the dam’s construction—which share something in common with both extremes.
In one of these photographs, published in Concrete magazine in 1927, the dam appears as a self-forming object, the hand drawn pencil lines of the elevation now become the crane drawn lines of steel wire which lift the scaffolding for the dam, while Portland Cement (“Concrete for Permanence”) gives weight and dimension to the paper dream. Nevertheless, look again and landscape relations also appear, the river pushing white through the dam, the trees looking on from above, and mountains pondering the cranes which seem to imitate their outline.
In another of these photographs, this one, published not in a technical magazine, but in Popular Mechanics, the blank of the elevation drawing’s white page is exchanged for the blank of black night, the dam seems nowhere in particular again, placeless, though look again and maybe it is its own place as the simile at the beginning of the caption suggests, “Like Some Weird Metropolis of the Future, the Towering Concrete Forms of This Hugh Dam Stand Out under the Floodlights Which Illuminate the Work at Night.” No longer (or rather not yet) the perfect structure which it appears to be in the diagram, while in the process of being built the dam appears as a city carrying with it connotations of a city’s (especially American cities of the 1920s) vertical ascent, endless activity and tokens of futurity—in other words a self-contained object suddenly overflows with metaphor, dream and feeling for those who see it and imagine it as other than what it is (which is probably the way we always see things).
And so, in photographs that show the process of its construction, the dam can be interpreted in more than one way. It can seem like an object outside place that threatens to obstruct place once installed, or it can seem like a landscape feature coming into place, fitting its form to the contours of mountains as it curves its back to better resist the compressing force of water. A third interpretation is also possible—instead of being either/or the dam is and/both, is both an object in and obstruction to a place (as it was) as well as a new feature in and form fit into a place (as it becomes a changed place). Dams—at least when thought about as ongoing projects, which they are even after they are “finished”—are interesting in this way, as the more one looks and thinks about them the more they do not easily fall onto one side of a nature/culture binary but instead act more like semicolons linking, by means beyond opposition, the “independent clauses” of nature and culture.
This claim may seem not only contestable, but misguided, because in one line of thinking (that is more diagrammatic than postcard or process-photograph like), dams are perhaps one of the most objective (in more than more sense) emblems of the human-culture-civilization side of the binary, representing it at its worse for as they halt and harness rivers dams are often understood as harming them (and by extension harming nature). As American Rivers puts it,
Up to 85 percent of all dams in our country are unnecessary, harmful, and even dangerous. We must remove thousands of them quickly. Our work to remove dams has been central to American Rivers over the past decades and will be even more important as we work to restore rivers in the decade ahead. Because removing a dam is the single most impactful way to secure a rivers’ future health.[1]
And many are onboard with this and similar calls for dam removal which have been quite successful as hundreds of dams in America have come down over the past few decades (though elsewhere the situation seems to be much different). Watching a dam come down perhaps only furthers the sentiment that they are cultural impositions against rivers/nature and not some kind of mediate thing. Watch the time-lapse of Washington’s Elwah Dam, that went up in 1913 and came down in 2012 as the largest (at the time) dam removal ever undertaken.[2] Before even half of it was deconstructed, you can see the river push through joyously, white foam on its lips. Obviously, dammed for a hundred, even a thousand years (silt levels aside) a river will flow again, and yet its pouring forth without a moment’s hesitation feels like something more than just the fact of gravity but also an act of memory aided by the ache of desire to return to a place it was so long denied. The sense of longing deepens when one considers how quickly fish, salamanders and all the rest of riparian life came back too, as if they were all waiting to return home again.
The ongoing project along the river is called the Elwha Ecosystem Restoration Project, just as the current dam removal on the Klamath river in California, even larger than that along the Elwha is called the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement.[3] Given the way the water flows and the fish spawn once again after removal, “restoration” does feel like a fitting term—a period of degradation switches to one of restoration, place returned to a former condition, but when this return is understood, or at least presented as unconditioned (i.e. the river before “culture” touched it ((usually meaning some form of Euro-American culture)) the idea becomes not only misleading but also curiously misanthropic as if to acknowledge the past human presence on a site is too much of a complication (if not an outright befoulment) of what we mean when we think of what nature is. This binary is palpable in before and after photos of the downstream dam on the Elwha River; you could easily brand one “culture” and the other “nature”.
On the upstream dam however, the distinction is not so easy to make, as the Tainter gate section of that dam has been preserved and turned into a walkway and overlook. In image, where it seems to have been hewn from and slowly eroded back into its rocky foundation, and in function, where it allows one to view the restored river as one walks upon repurposed infrastructure, the remnant dam offers another way of thinking of nature/culture, where culture itself is perhaps a phase in the eras of nature inflecting the appearance of nature for a while before it is superseded by another appearance, which may visually look like a “return”, but which from other perspectives probably is not: the water may flow like it did one hundred years ago, but a river is much more than its flow, much more than its fish, much more than its physical form as a river is also an idea, changes in which (as dam removal proves) can be very consequential for the river and its basin.
Better or worse evaluations aside the Elwha River, like any other undammed, remains forever different because of what we have done (in practice and thought) to it. Anyone interested in restoration would probably acknowledge this, but acknowledgement of a fact, does not necessitate recognition of the meaning of that fact in practice or rhetoric, both of which often default to a simpler idea of nature/culture that often replicates itself on the ground in place through practice, or how we talk about place with words through rhetoric. The remnant piece of dam on the Elwha offers a more complex dynamic, as it makes it difficult to default to the either/or thinking. Instead, it asks one to remember, think through, maybe even celebrate the constant intimacy of nature and culture, perhaps it even commemorates the differences we can make in a place, while at the same time regretting many of the consequences of that difference. The leftover dam becomes a way of thinking about nature and culture beyond opposition, a thinking that might be called “landscape thinking” for landscape (as in the postcard) seems to designate a way of thinking in relations, a way of understanding place as made of relations (which, as the process photographs emphasize are always ongoing relations) where binaries are not entertained because they are unsatisfying aesthetically, ethically, and ecologically. Aesthetically in that they do not fulfill the intricacy and subtlety of what can be perceived in a postcard of place let alone a living place. Ethically in that they do not adequately assess the intentions of human communities, so often making culture seem a culprit wantonly victimizing nature. Ecologically in that they often presuppose some Edenic pre-cultural past forever undone by the post-cultural moment as if environments only have two states.
The Santeetlah Dam, still an active one with no prospects for removal, also makes landscape, whether one is beholding it in a postcard, or experiencing it firsthand. It is not a place to be quicky bifurcated into its natural and cultural parts but instead it is best understood as something other than the two.[4] When I visited the namesake lake of the dam its surface glistened blue warming into green; the treeline met the waterline without intervening banks which made the hills above look like buoyant leafy masses ready to sail if the winds were brisker or the waves spryer. I could not see the dam from where I stood, and had I not been told before my visit that the lake was artificial, I would not have known (though I also wonder what difference such knowledge would make in experiencing it as a landscape). I did not stay at Santeetlah long, in fact, I had gotten there more by accident than intention as I was driving without GPS letting the road signs guide me to where I wanted to go next (Kituwah) after leaving Kilmer Memorial Forest. After the lake, the next stop I made was along the Cheoah River which the dam dams. There I did feel the need to have additional knowledge, as I was surprised by the relatively large trees that grew in the river, standing in its current which I was sure would knock me down if I waded into it. How could trees have seeded, let alone persisted above such rushing waters? As if waiting for my query, I came upon an information display set up near the river titled “Shaping the Flow of the Cheoah River” and subtitled “The Cheoah River can be a tranquil forest stream…or a whitewater torrent.” It explained how the flow of the water allowed out of the dam is regulated, usually to make it a “tranquil forest stream”, though my visit coincided with a controlled release torrent day. As the display puts it,
Although these big releases may seem chaotic and destructive, they’re actually beneficial to aquatic life. They also make for exciting sections of Class IV-V whitewater for expert boaters.
When the Santeetlah Dam was built in the 1920s to generate hydroelectric power, it nearly cut off the natural flow of the Cheoah River. Fish and other aquatic wildlife were greatly reduced or disappeared, and trees and shrubs took root in the dry river channel. In the early 2000’s…agency mangers created a flow regime intended to restore natural conditions to the river by increasing the year-round base flows. They also use larger releases to mimic seasonal big rain events, creating healthy flows that refresh the river system and its surrounding habitats.[5]
Santeetlah Dam makes landscape differently than the remnant dam on the Elwha. The inactive dam complicates and offers way of thinking about the relations of nature and culture by juxtaposing two histories in the life of a river (free-flowing : dammed) which ends up producing a third history (free-flowing after being dammed). The operating dam on the other hand, actively manages the claims of culture and nature achieving at times cooperative and coordinated outcomes that create a place not quite natural, not wholly cultural, but a landscape born from both.
As the display suggests the dam did not always function with coordinating aspirations, especially when it came to environmental concerns. When it began operations in the 1928, it was the second dam in the Tennessee River Valley built by aluminum company Alcoa primarily to provide power for their reduction operations in its namesake company town in Tennessee. The development of the Santeetlah Dam (as well as its siblings: Cheoah, Calderwood, and Chilhowee) also meant development in the surrounding area of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina as jobs, rural electricity, and education opportunities flowed in as the flow of rivers was held back.[6] Loss and change in the local ecosystems also bought about loss and change in the local social systems, as settlements were flooded, and roads used for decades were suddenly made unpassable.[7] Even with the sole aim of power generation for an industry, the dam already mediated (or maybe meddled with) not just the claims of water but also those of human communities. And now, given its role in moderating the river for fish and recreation in addition to electricity, it becomes even more of a semicolon, asking those who behold it (let alone those who own it) to consider it not as something that facilitates culture by impeding nature, but as something that complicates both those terms by relating them beyond opposition, the dam being able to accommodate the flow of fish and the flow of power, creating a landscape where the demands of both concerns can be met.[8]
One day the dam will not be there; the lake will drain, the Cheoah will have a full release, land submerged will resurface, land drained will be inundated again. Whatever observers see this (and perhaps even precipitate it) hopefully, will not call it a restoration, as if the acts of the past have been undone, or need to be redeemed. Instead, if they think differently (because they perceive differently), they will understand it as another change in the relations that have made and make this landscape so grand.
Images:
Lake Santeetlah Postcard. n.d. E.C. Kropp Co. In the author’s collection.
Detail of Plan and Elevation of Santeetlah Dam. n.d. no artist listed, found on p.10 of “Santeetlah Hydroelectric Development Application”, National Register of Historic Places.
Santeetlah Dam Portland Cement Advertisement, 1927, no artist listed, found in Concrete Magazine, August 1927 vol 31. no.2, p.11.
Big Arch of Concrete Thousand Feet Long, 1927, no artist listed, found in Popular Mechanics Magazine, September 1927 vol 48, no.3, p.460.
Lower Elwha River Dam Site Before and After. 2010 and 2016. Steve Ringman. Found in Mapes, Lynda V. “Elwah Roaring back to life”. Seattle Times Online, February 13, 2016: https://projects.seattletimes.com/2016/elwha/
The Glines Canyon Dam Site following removal of Glines Canyon Dam. 2014. Thomas O’Keefee. Found at, https://www.flickr.com/photos/riversandcreeks/31164152035.
[1] American Rivers. “About American Rivers”, https://www.americanrivers.org/about/, accessed October 11, 2023. For a well balanced overview of the dam removal movement as well the dam development movement see: https://www.wired.com/2016/05/death-birth-american-dam/
[2] National Geographic “After Largest Dam Removal in U.S. History, This River Is Thriving”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VipVo8zPH0U&t=16s, created, June 2, 2016, accessed October 11, 2023.
[3] For more on the Elwha project see: Mapes, Lynda V. “Elwah Roaring back to life”. Seattle Times Online, February 13, 2016: https://projects.seattletimes.com/2016/elwha/. For more on the Klamath project see: Profita, Cassandra. “The world’s largest dam removal will touch many lives in the Klamath River Basin”. Oregon Public Broadcasting, November 18, 2022: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/18/klamath-river-dam-removal-southern-oregon-dams-northern-california-drought/.
[4] Other large-scale undertaking like open-pit mines and some forms of agriculture, each for their own reasons, seem to trouble the natural/cultural —nature/man binary and instead ask for forms of thinking that go beyond this standoff. Scale though, seems to be a common feature.
[5] Nantahala National Forest. “Shaping the Flow of the Cheoah River.” Display sign at Joyce Kilmer Bridge Fishing Access.
[6] Collectively there were called the Tapoco Project, named after the utilities arm of Alcoa. Each of the dams, as well the Fontana Dam built by the TVA has a NRHP designation as each has been deemed significant for their engineering, architecture, and social history. Their applications are a good place to start if one wants to learn more. For Santeethlah’s see: Santeetlah Hydroelectric Development, National Register of Historic Places, April 02, 2004:https://files.nc.gov/ncdcr/nr/GH0062.pdf.
[7] For an example of the social costs of the dam’s constructions see the court case, Colvin v. Power Company in which George and Riley Colvin argued that the dam caused “unlawful and wrongful flooding and submerging” of roads used by them and their community for over forty years. See: Strong, Robert C. Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of North Carolina, Spring Term 1930, Fall Term 1930 ( North Carolina Reports Vol. 199). Bynum Printing Company: Raleigh, 1931. p.353-360.
[8] For an assessment of the dam under its current owners (Brookfield Smoky Mountain Hydro) see: Low Impact Hydropower Institute, “LIHI Certificate #18 – Smoky Mountain Project, North Carolina and Tennessee”, https://lowimpacthydro.org/lihi-certificate-18-smoky-mountain-project-north-carolina/
