File:Thorpe Power Station, Tuckasegee, NC (45900024404).jpg

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Description This is the power house of the Thorpe Hydropower Station, located in the West Fork Tuckaseigee River Gorge on North Carolina Highway 107 near Tuckasegee, North Carolina. The power station, which was created by damming the West Fork of the Tuckaseigee River at Onion Falls to form Lake Glenville, located 1,207 feet above the power house, the highest vertical drop of any hydroelectric station east of the Rocky Mountains. The power house is a fine example of the fusion of the Gothic Revival and Art Deco styles, featuring Art Deco massing and trim with Gothic-style windows, and is arguably one of the most beautiful power stations in the United States. The power house was built with the lake in 1941 by the Nantahala Power and Light Company to help power the ALCOA Aluminum Plant in Eastern Tennessee, Knoxville, with support from the federal government as it was aiding the war effort during World War II. The construction was a massive undertaking, requiring the removal of the entire town of Glenville, which sat in the West Fork Tuckaseigee River Valley, and the building of the highest lake east of the Rocky Mountains, at a surface elevation of 3,494 feet. The power plant also has the feature of a long distance from the lake to the turbines, during which the water is channeled through a tunnel and pipe system many miles long, which is visible from North Carolina Highway 107 near Glenville. The power house itself sits in the West Fork Tuckaseigee River Gorge just above the community of Tuckasegee, near a smaller lake and power plant built during the 1950s to provide supplementary power generation capacity. The hydroelectric complex is one of two in the county, the other being on the East Fork of the Tuckaseigee River in Canada Township, consisting of four reservoirs built in the early 1950s - Cedar Cliff, Bear, Wolf Creek, and Tannassee Creek. The combined power output of the dams provided power to the burgeoning industrial sector in the upper Tennessee River Valley during the 1940s and 1950s, and provided additional flood control to prevent a repeat of the 1940 flood that devastated nearby communities.
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Source Thorpe Power Station, Tuckasegee, NC
Author Warren LeMay from Cullowhee, NC, United States
Camera location35° 14′ 03.16″ N, 83° 07′ 32.18″ W Kartographer map based on OpenStreetMap.View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMapinfo

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Creative Commons CC-Zero This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

This image was originally posted to Flickr by w_lemay at https://flickr.com/photos/59081381@N03/45900024404. It was reviewed on 25 November 2019 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-zero.

25 November 2019

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current01:39, 25 November 2019Thumbnail for version as of 01:39, 25 November 20193,024 × 4,032 (5.3 MB)Ser Amantio di Nicolao (talk | contribs)Transferred from Flickr via #flickr2commons

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