Lake stories
The story of Lake Hartwell
A Revolutionary War heroine’s name, a river port under the water, and a dam that turned two rivers into 56,000 acres of lake.
Named for Nancy Hart
Hart County was created in 1853 and named for Nancy Morgan Hart, a patriot of the Revolutionary War in Georgia’s backcountry. It’s the only one of Georgia’s 159 counties named for a woman. Hartwell was founded the next year as the county seat, and the lake took its name from the town.
1950–1963
Building the dam
- 1950
Congress authorizes the project in the Flood Control Act.
- 1955
Construction starts, seven miles below where the Tugaloo and Seneca rivers meet to form the Savannah.
- 1956
Clemson College objects that the lake would flood campus, Memorial Stadium included. The Corps builds two diversion dams to route the Seneca around it. The same year a court settles with Eliza Brock, the landowner who held out longest.
- 1961
The reservoir starts filling in February.
- 1962
The dam opens: about 12,400 feet of concrete and earth, with a 12-gate spillway and the powerhouse on the South Carolina side. The whole project is finished in 1963.
- 1964
Record high, 665.4 ft, in April.
- 2008
Record low, about 637.5 ft, in December.
- 2013
July 9: all the spillway gates open, only the third time outside of tests.
- 2026
Seepage under the Clemson saddle dike: the Corps holds the lake at 656 ft all year.
What’s under the water
Andersonville, SC was a river port and resort town, settled around 1801 where the Tugaloo and Seneca met and named for Revolutionary veteran Robert Anderson. Floods in 1840 wrecked it, the railroads passed it by, and the lake covered what was left. Andersonville Island, near Portman Marina, is the largest island on the lake at about 400 acres, and still has an old paved road on it.
Tugaloo, a Cherokee town and Mississippian mound site at the mouth of Toccoa Creek, was excavated by University of Georgia archaeologists in 1959, then flooded.
Cemetery Island was the hilltop family graveyard of Harrisburg Plantation. The water rose around it, and the 59 graves are still there. People call it Ghost Island and tell a story about a witch’s granddaughter haunting it; historians say there’s no evidence she ever existed. If you land there, treat it as what it is: a cemetery.
When the lake drops, as it has this year, old roadbeds and foundations come back into view. Look, take pictures, and leave everything where it is: it’s federal property, and removing artifacts is against the law.
Lake Hartwell by the numbers
- 56,000acres of water
- 962 miof shoreline
- 45 ftaverage depth (185 ft deepest)
- 49 miup the Tugaloo arm (45 up the Seneca)
Sources: Corps of Engineers, SC DNR, the Georgia Encyclopedia, the University of Georgia, Upcountry Historical, Bassmaster.