Cheat Lake: The Lake Locals Renamed

Planning started in nineteen ten for a hydroelectric dam on the Cheat River to feed the growing demand for electricity in the region. World War One halted construction, and it was not until December of nineteen twenty-five that water first spilled over the top of the new dam, forming a thirteen-mile lake with twenty-six miles of shoreline. The power company named it Lake Lynn, after Albert Lynn, president of West Penn Power.

Local people ignored the name entirely. They called it Cheat Lake, after the river, and kept calling it that for five decades until the United States Board of Geographic Names made it official in nineteen seventy-six. The lake today stretches from the Mason-Dixon Line across the northeastern corner of Monongalia County, and the recovery of the once coal-degraded Cheat River is considered one of West Virginia's conservation success stories.