Little Rowboat

A pretty little row boat, ready for customers on Parkville lake just above the Ocoee Dam in full summer morning beauty....This lake is in the... more

by Debra and Dave Vanderlaan

Title

Little Rowboat

Artist

Debra and Dave Vanderlaan

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

A pretty little row boat, ready for customers on Parkville lake just above the Ocoee Dam in full summer morning beauty....This lake is in the Cherokee National Forest at the base of the Ocoee River Gorge where the summer Olympics were held in 1996. The lake holds pristine mountain water and is a wonderful spot for canoeing, fishing, and swimming. The cypress trees were planted by the National Forest Service to encourage a fish hatchery and add a wonderful nature element to the mountain landscape...
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Ocoee Dam Number 1 is a hydroelectric dam on the Ocoee River in Polk County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The dam impounds the 1,930-acre (780 ha) Parksville Reservoir (often called Ocoee Lake), and is the farthest downstream of four dams on the Toccoa/Ocoee River owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Completed in 1911, Ocoee No. 1 was one of the first hydroelectric projects in Tennessee and remains the oldest dam in the TVA system.
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The Upper Ocoee riverbed had remained dry throughout most of the 20th century, which allowed for the manipulation and construction of a world-class racing course. The Ocoee Gorge is wider at this point, allowing ample room for spectators. With the Ocoee approximately 100 miles north of Atlanta, all three of these factors made the Upper Ocoee the ideal place to host the 1996 Summer Olympics Whitewater Slalom competition.
The Ocoee would be the first natural river used for Olympic whitewater competition, but this upper stretch was shallow and too wide to generate the desired intensity for whitewater slalom. Course designers rechanneled the riverbed to create an Olympic course one-third the width of the original riverbed. To estimate the effects of this rechanneling, the design team used a 300-foot, 1:10-scale physical model for calculation purposes, and to minimize the time and cost for experimental boulder placement, the amout of water required for full-scale testing, and disruption to the river. Sandstone boulders harvested from the area shaped the course banks and venue, some weighing up to seven tons each. The design team developed the concept to build a river within a river. They used levees or banks to create the narrow "inner" whitewater course. This allowed the "outer" river to be used for viewing areas during events and to convey high flows during floods. The project of rechanneling the original riverbed took less than two years to complete, and created what would soon be called "America's Olympic River." July 1996 brought over 15,000 visitors and more than 1,000 volunteers and staff to the banks of the Upper Ocoee River.

Uploaded

August 19th, 2011