Lake Hartwell Now

Lake stories for kids

The comics

Short, true comics about what’s under Lake Hartwell and why it does what it does, for readers about seven to ten and the grown-up reading along. Every fact in them is one we checked; the sources are on our history and water level pages.

Meet the cast

  • The one who knows

    Gauge

    The staff gauge at the dam. He has measured the lake every day since it filled, and he always knows exactly how high the water is.

  • The curious one

    Blue

    A blueback herring. Small, quick and nervous, because on Lake Hartwell nearly every bigger fish wants to eat her. She asks everything.

  • The one who likes things the way they were

    Hy

    A hybrid striped bass, half striper, half white bass. Fish like him are stocked here by Georgia and South Carolina. He is not a fan of change.

There’s a town under the water

Andersonville, a river port where the Tugaloo and Seneca meet, and what’s left of it.

Six panels: Gauge tells Blue the herring that the river port of Andersonville lies under the lake, wrecked by an 1840 flood, passed by the railroads and covered when the lake filled.

Why the lake is stuck at 656

A dike near Clemson, a little leak, and why the lake has a new “full.” The grown-up version.

Six panels: Gauge explains to Hy the hybrid striper that the Corps keeps Lake Hartwell at 656 feet because a dike near Clemson is seeping, and will until it is fixed.

The hill they dug before the water came

The Tugaloo town site, studied in 1959 before the lake covered it.

Six panels: Blue finds a flat-topped hill on the lake bed; it is the Tugaloo town and mound site, dug by archaeologists in 1959 before the lake covered it.