Editing Elizabethton, Tennessee (section)

=== The City of Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority ===
Elizabethton was first served by relatively inexpensive [[hydroelectric]] power during the early 1910s, leading to the popular "The City of Power" moniker.<ref name="ReferenceA" /> The Horseshoe section of the Watauga River (within the [[Tennessee Valley Authority]] reservation behind the TVA [[Wilbur Dam]]) is the site of the first hydroelectric dam constructed in Tennessee (beginning in 1909), going online with power production and distribution in 1912.

[[File:HerbertClarkHoover.jpg|left|thumb|120px|U.S. President<br />Herbert C. Hoover]]
The 1928 [[U.S. Republican Party|Republican]] U.S. presidential candidate [[Herbert Hoover|Herbert C. Hoover]] made his only southern campaign stop at Elizabethton and delivered his nationally broadcast October 6, 1928, election "[[stump speech (politics)|stump speech]]" before 50,000 people gathered at the base of Lynn Mountain in Harmon Field (now at the mini-park and the Elizabethton/Carter County Chamber of Commerce building location on U.S. 321) during Elizabethton's Second Annual Industrial Celebration.<ref name="Dixie 1979">"Hoover Day in Dixie: Elizabethton's Second Annual Industrial Celebration October 6th, 1928". Dan W. Crowe, 1979.</ref>

During the Elizabethton speech, Hoover "...alluded to a matter of growing concern, the status of the Federal Government's involvement in the [hydrogeneration] production of [electric] power, specifically the [[Muscle Shoals]] (Alabama) issue: "There are local instances where the Government must enter the business field as a by-product to some great major purpose such as an improvement in navigation, flood control, irrigation, scientific research or national defense."<ref name="Dixie 1979" />

It was the succession of Republican presidents in the White House at the time leading up to the [[Great Depression]]—first [[President of the United States|President]] [[Calvin Coolidge|Coolidge]] in 1928, followed by President Hoover later in 1931—choosing to veto the federal legislation passed by the [[U.S. Congress]] that would have created a water power development agency of the federal government.

It was U.S. Senator [[George William Norris|George W. Norris]] of Nebraska who sponsored the [[Tennessee Valley Authority]] Act of 1933, water power development legislation which was finally enacted during the administration of President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] that created the Tennessee Valley Authority. Norris was later an important proponent of the [[Rural Electrification Act]] of 1936.

Following the end of [[World War II]], the TVA [[Watauga Lake|Watauga Dam and Reservoir]] were completed {{convert|3|mi|0}} upstream of the Wilbur Dam in 1948.<ref name="tva.gov" />

The TVA Wilbur Dam has four hydroelectric generating turbines with a production capacity of 10,700 kilowatts of electricity<ref>[http://www.elizabethton.org/about/h_places.html#carter_mansion Elizabethton.org. History – Historic Places.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070627182341/http://www.elizabethton.org/about/h_places.html|date=June 27, 2007}}</ref> while the TVA Watauga hydroelectric facility upstream has two generating units with a net dependable capacity (the amount of power a hydrogenerating impounded reservoir can produce on an average day, minus the electricity used by the dam itself) of 66 megawatts.<ref name="tva.gov2" />