Qualla: Land Between the Lakes and the Drowned Towns

Land Between the Lakes and the Drowned Towns: Introduction

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TheCatalyst31, CC0. Beneath the waters of Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley lie the bones of towns. The Land Between the Lakes - a 170,000-acre national recreation area spanning Kentucky and Tennessee - exists because the Tennessee Valley Authority needed reservoirs. In the 1940s and 1960s, they got them, flooding two river valleys and displacing over 2,500 families who had lived there for generations. The town of Birmingham had a hotel, three churches, and a school. Model had stores and a post office. Both are gone now, drowned beneath recreational lakes where pleasure boats cruise above what were once Main Streets. Former residents and their descendants still gather at surviving cemeteries on the peninsula, remembering a world the government decided to erase.

Image: TheCatalyst31 | CC0

Land Between the Lakes and the Drowned Towns: The Taking

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Just an image guy, CC BY 4.0. The Tennessee Valley Authority was created in 1933 to control flooding and generate electricity. Dams meant lakes, and lakes meant drowning whatever lay in the valleys. Kentucky Dam, completed in 1944, flooded the Tennessee River valley to create Kentucky Lake. Barkley Dam, finis...

Image: Just an image guy | CC BY 4.0

Land Between the Lakes and the Drowned Towns: The Ghost Towns

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tennessee Valley Authority, Public domain. Birmingham, Kentucky was a river town - steamboats stopped there, farmers brought tobacco to market, and iron furnaces operated during the Civil War. Gone. Model, Tennessee had a hotel called the Pace House, where Abraham Lincoln reportedly stayed. Gone. Golden Pond was the penin...

Image: Tennessee Valley Authority | Public domain

Land Between the Lakes and the Drowned Towns: The Homecomings

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Land Between the Lakes KY/TN from Golden Pond, KY, USA, Public domain. Every year, former residents and their descendants return to cemeteries scattered across the peninsula - the graves that couldn't be moved, the ones the government left behind. They gather at Rushing Creek, at Hillman Ferry, at the Between the Rivers cemetery where 43 graves pred...

Image: Land Between the Lakes KY/TN from Golden Pond, KY, USA | Public domain

Land Between the Lakes and the Drowned Towns: The Recreation Area

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Land Between the Lakes KY/TN from Golden Pond, KY, USA, Public domain. Land Between the Lakes is now managed by the US Forest Service as a national recreation area - 170,000 acres of forest and shoreline between two of the largest reservoirs in the eastern United States. There are campgrounds, trails, an elk and bison prairie, a living history farm,...

Image: Land Between the Lakes KY/TN from Golden Pond, KY, USA | Public domain

Land Between the Lakes and the Drowned Towns: Visiting Land Between the Lakes

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Plazak, CC BY-SA 3.0. Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area spans western Kentucky and Tennessee between Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. Multiple entrances access the Trace; the North and South Welcome Stations provide maps and information. The Homeplace 1850s Working Farm demonstrates pre-T...

Image: Plazak | CC BY-SA 3.0