RALEIGH

By Bill Kiser

Lake Norman Times

While Lake Norman has existed for more than 40 years, the history of its creation actually goes back even further - to the early 1900's to be precise.

Soon after the end of the Civil War, James B."Buck" Duke - at the time, the president of the American tobacco company - and his brother, Ben Duke, led the way in the creation of the textile industry in north Carolina. they started a series of textile mills along the Catawba river, using the river to create the power needed to run them.

In their efforts to learn everything they could about hydroelectric power, the Dukes met Dr. W.Gil wyliehad experimented with hydroelectric power generation with his Catawba Power company in south Carolina, In turn, Wylie introduced the duke brothers to William S. Lee, an engineer who was designing dams and power plants for the Catawba Power Company.

The trio - the Duke brothers, Wtlie and Lee - teamed up to formthe southern Power company in 1905, which grew over the next two decades to provide electricity for more than 300 cotton mills and other factories in the region.

In 1927, the southern Power Company became the Duke Power Company, beginning a project of 10 dams and a dozen power plants along the Catawba River.

But Duke Power's biggest project - the creation of cowan's ford Dam and with it, Lake Norman - was yet to come.

Designing the project was left to billLee III, the grandson of William S. Lee, who would come up with a design for a combination concrete-earthen dam that would stretch more than 7,300 feet and create a lake that would become the largest in the state of North Carolina.

Groundbreaking on the Cowan's ford Dam project ocurred on sept. 28, 1959, with construction taking four years. It took two more years to fill Lakje Norman to its full capacity. Yet Lake Norman didn't become popular overnight. Even as far back as the late 1970s, waterfront lots could be brought for $1,000 an acre. however, with the opening of Interstate 77 - which runs from Cleveland, Ohio, to Columbia, S.C. - development began to pick up along Lake Norman and the neighboring towns of Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville and Mooresville.

Today, Lake Norman not only serves as a popular recreation and living area, but it provides water to hundreds of Thousands of homes and businesses, and serve as a source of cooling water to two Duke Power (now called Duke Energy) power plants, Marshall Steam station and McGuire Nulear Plant.