Many others in the community had mixed feelings about the project as it impacted residents in different ways. “It was inconvenient until people got used to it.”
“That was one thing … people used to live side-by-side and then after the lake came in, they had to drive miles to be able to see each other or to go to church,” McConnell said. Even as roads started closing, she said it felt like they were almost being cut off from neighbors. Martha McConnell, president of the Historical Society of Cumming/Forsyth County, who was a little girl living in Cumming at the time, said that she remembers there being a thin layer of fear in the community surrounding the project. The Corps of Engineers ended up shutting down or rerouting roads, replacing bridges and tearing down houses, barns, fences and other structures that were in the area that would later become Lake Lanier. Suddenly, the entire area seemed to be changing. government set out to acquire the rights to more than 56,000 acres of land to make room for the 38,000-acre lake and nearly 700 miles of shoreline, and during the process, Coughlin said that 700 families in North Georgia were relocated. Nearly half of the cost of the multimillion-dollar project was spent buying land and relocating the families, churches and even gravesites that used to reside on the land that now makes up the bottom of Lake Lanier. All at once, Coughlin said that they started to reroute roads, rethink and reconstruct bridges, and start the process of buying up mostly farmland owned by residents at the time.
It was a big deal and a big change to the area.”Īs the Corps of Engineers started construction, the entire area around the site in Forsyth, Hall, Gwinnett and Dawson counties started to change. “I mean, when they had the groundbreaking, it brought people from all over Georgia to the area to see them officially start a project. Local officials held a groundbreaking for Buford Dam in March 1950, and Coughlin said about 10,000 people gathered to watch then Atlanta Mayor William Hartsfield, Cumming Mayor Roy Otwell and other leaders break ground at the site for the first time. Despite it being a rural area, though, the project was a huge undertaking, gaining attention from those all over the state.įunding for the project was approved in 1949, and after both the lake and the dam were completely finished, the total cost of the project ended up being nearly $45 million, according to documents archived by the Historical Society of Cumming/Forsyth County. The Corps of Engineers was originally thinking of placing the dam in Roswell, but they ended up deciding on the current site because it was a more rural area at the time. government sought out the construction of Lake Lanier and Buford Dam specifically to help provide a water source to residents near Atlanta, use the dam as a power source for surrounding homes, and help prevent flooding from the Chattahoochee River. directly after World War II to develop the nation’s waterways, according to a previous 400 Life story.Ĭoughlin said that the U.S. The project was part of a much larger mission across the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Lake Sidney Lanier in the 1950s in conjunction with Buford Dam. The body of water has become such an integrated piece of the community, that it almost feels like it has just always been there. Robert David Coughlin, the author of “Storybook Site: The Early History and Construction of Buford Dam” and a former park ranger on the lake, said that he has met many people in North Georgia who did not realize that Lake Lanier is a man-made lake. The Lake Sidney Lanier that many know today is always bouncing with excitement, especially during Georgia’s warmer months, as people from all over the state crowd the lake’s surrounding parks, campgrounds and marinas.įamilies go to hang out and play at the parks, residents take their boats out either just for some fun in the sun or to spend a couple of hours fishing, people take time to exercise or relax on a walk down surrounding trails, and many travel across to Lake Lanier Islands for some leisurely golfing.Īs the sun beats down on North Georgia and families find themselves heading out to Lake Lanier to enjoy themselves, many may not know about the relics from the lake’s history that still sit waiting far beneath the surface. This article appears in the September issue of 400 Life Magazine.
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