Rhea Springs: The Resort That Lies Under Watts Bar Lake

On the map, Rhea Springs, Tennessee, appears as a place. In reality, it has been underwater since nineteen forty-two. Long before that, Native people are said to have used the mineral springs here as medicine.

By the early eighteen hundreds, settlers had built a resort around two sulphur springs, calling the place Sulphur Springs until eighteen seventy-eight. At its height, Rhea Springs had a hotel, a springhouse, a school, a church, and a post office. Mineral spring resorts were a genuine industry across Tennessee before the automobile scattered travelers.

When the Tennessee Valley Authority surveyed the area in the late nineteen thirties to plan Watts Bar Dam, they found a large hotel and seventeen small houses still standing. Construction began in nineteen thirty-nine. The dam closed in January nineteen forty-two, and Watts Bar Lake rose over what remained of Rhea Springs.

The water has been there ever since.