Lake Jocassee:
Hidden History
The area now known
as Lake Jocassee used to be a community
called Jocassee Valley. In 1973, a dam being built by the Duke
Power Community replaced the neighborhood with 300 ft. of water.
The dam’s purpose was to stop the flow of four rivers in the area,
but the side effect was the loss of the Jocassee Valley.
The Hotel in Lake
Jocassee
One building,
however, survived: a hotel called the Attakulla Lodge. The hotel’s
owner fought the Lake Jocassee development and was able to keep the
Duke Power Company from demolishing his structure. It was the only
structure still intact when the water poured in back in 1973.
Now, all these
years later, divers have located the hotel 300 ft. deep in the
lake–and the woman who grew up as a child there has been able to
finally revisit her memories.
“The hardest part
is me is I can’t take my children there,” the woman, Debbie Fletcher,
tells CNN. “It’s one thing to lose your house, but to lose a
part of your heart… it’s really still hard.”
Fletcher has been
able to visit the hotel under the lake and even now has one of its
light fixtures as a memory of her lost world.
Lake Jocassee
Hotel Video
The following video
of Lake Jocassee shows the hotel found 300 ft. deep in the lake and
also features an interview with Debbie Fletcher about her
experiences.