Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
History of Beaver Lake recalled by residents
The idea to build a dam on the White River originated after the great flood of 1927 devastated six southern states, including Arkansas. In 1929, the U.S. Corps of Engineers began the study of flood control in the White River basin. In 1949, area leaders formed the Beaver Dam Association to lobby Congress for the dam. The association studied such things as erosion, flooding, irrigation, municipal water supply and hydroelectric power — all to promote the lake’s construction. The leader and first president of the Beaver Dam Association for Northwest Arkansas was Earl Harris, owner of the Harris Bakery in Rogers.
The Beaver Dam Association and U.S. Rep. James Trimble, D-Berryville, who represented Northwest Arkansas, lobbied Congress to obtain funding for the lake project. In addition to the local chambers of commerce, there was a group of people who battled for the dam and lake — Harris; Hardy Croxton, a Rogers attorney; Hal Douglas, a newspaperman from Fayetteville; Joe Steele, owner of a canning company from Springdale; Clayton Little, a Bentonville attorney; and others.
At that time, decisions to build lakes were made on a cost-benefit analysis that compared construction costs to the benefits from flood control and the generation of electricity. The problem was that the lake could not be justified on the basis of flood control and hydroelectric power alone.
In 1958, Congress passed the Water Supply Act, which allowed a public water supply to be added to other benefits to justify the cost to build a dam. In early 1960, Rogers, Bentonville, Springdale and Fayetteville agreed to buy $5 million worth of water from the Corps. The height of the proposed dam was raised 5 feet to provide additional water storage. By including the use of the lake for the area’s water supply, the dam’s cost was justified.
In the late 1950s, the Corps started buying more than 40,000 acres in Benton, Washington and Carroll counties. The groundbreaking for the dam was held Nov. 22, 1960, with Trimble and Arkansas Gov. Orville Faubus participating. Faubus declared, “Nature has given the Ozarks their unmatched beauty. Now, Beaver Dam will help this hill country grow into one of the most prosperous areas of our nation” (Courtesy of the The Springdale Morning News and Shiloh Museum of Ozark History web site, July 14, 2007). Faubus’ prophesy was fulfilled beyond his wildest dreams.
According to the staff of the Corps, Beaver Dam was never dedicated. A dedication ceremony was scheduled for November 1964, and President John F. Kennedy was to be present. After his assassination the previous year, the dedication apparently was never rescheduled.
Two companies joined forces to build the dam with a bid of $15,913,037.10 on Nov. 3, 1960. The contractors started work immediately. The final cost of Beaver Dam and all of the land for the lake was about $50 million.
A fascinating account of the building of the dam was reported by Flip Putthoff in a May 25, 1986, interview with Beaver Lake Resident Manager Bob Anderson in the Rogers Morning News. Anderson worked on the dam for the Corps during construction and eventually became resident manager of Beaver Lake in 1979. Here are some excerpts from that interview:
“It took 400 men nearly five years to build the dam, using 780,000 cubic yards of concrete and 1,700,000 yards of earth. The workers — mainly from Rogers and Eureka Springs — traveled to the site every day. Roads to the job site from Rogers and Eureka Springs were paved, so the workers could return home each evening.”
“Tons of explosives were used to blast away the rock to make way for the dam. Fertilizer and diesel fuel — the same combination used in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing — was used for blasting. The blasting was one of the most dangerous hazards to workers. In spite of the hazards, no one was killed or seriously injured during the construction of the dam.”
“The massive amount of concrete that went into the dam had to be poured at a precise temperature. In the summer, ice from an onsite ice plant was added to the concrete to keep it cool. In the winter, tents were constructed over the pour and heat pumped in to keep the concrete warm. The work went on 24 hours a day, seven days a week for almost five years.”
As the dam was being built, other tasks had to be completed. The first was buying the land — some of which was fertile farm land, but most was almost worthless rocky hills and hollers. Much of the land was acquired by paying the back taxes the landowners owed. Surveying the land was a monumental task because the river meandered through Northwest Arkansas like a giant 70-mile-long centipede.
All of the cemeteries scattered through the hills in the lake’s path had to be moved. There were 39 cemeteries identified in the affected area of the future lake, and these were successfully moved by June 1963. A total of 1,584 graves were moved, including one of the most famous: William “Coin” Harvey, developer of Monte Ne.
On March 16, 1961, the Corps began selling the structures in the lakes’ path — including houses, barns, sheds and chicken houses. All of the buildings not sold were leveled by the Corps. Any obstacle that protruded upward and was deemed a hazard to boats was leveled, including some picturesque rock formations.
By 1963, the water was starting to back up behind the dam. Here are excerpts from a May 1, 1993, story by Kent Marts in the Benton County Daily Record. In
May 1965, the lake had crept high enough that power generation was started. H.L. Cox, a local barber, recalled when surveyors with the Corps came through, putting up stakes at the high-water mark.
“People laughed at them when they said that’s where the water is going to be,” Cox said. Cox grew up in the Coppermine area, which is now the Rocky Branch Recreation Area. “Dad sold 100 acres, a house, barn and outbuildings for $5,000 a few years before the lake was announced.” A few years later, the Corps bought much of the old Cox home place, but left a few acres with the owner. “I heard, last year, a guy bought 15 of those acres on top of a hill for $250,000.” It was hard for Cox to believe the land on the hills turned out to be more valuable than the fertile bottom lands along the river.
Bonnie and Bill Grimes, longtime Rogers Public School educators, recalled the event in Marts’ article. “Day in and day out, the lake continued to rise,” Bill Grimes said. His wife, Bonnie Grimes recalled, “I remember thinking it would take an awful lot of water to get as high as they said it would. We would go down almost daily and see how much it came up.”
The doubters and disbelievers found the engineers knew what they were talking about. The Grimes family owned 445 acres of fertile bottom lands, and Bill grew up farming it like his father and grandfather before him. The Corps took 130 acres, paying $100 an acre for the best farm land and much less for the forest-covered hills.
“It certainly wasn’t much money, and I think about everybody was better off, but I don’t know if a lot of people will admit it,” Bonnie Grimes said. “Our house was one of the better ones along the river — it had
wood heat, no insulation, and when the wind blew, it would come through the wood floor and make the linoleum flap.”
Before the dam, the river would flood regularly, sometimes killing people and cattle and destroying a lot of property. Bill Grimes remembers tremendous floods on the river. “While it is easy to paint life as idyllic before the lake, the construction of Beaver Dam and the formation of the lake benefited Northwest Arkansas,” said Bill Grimes “We gave up something for the benefit of everyone. Sure we gave up things, but we also helped ensure there was something here, so our kids could stay here and work.”
Northwest Arkansans wasted no time in tapping Beaver Lake’s recreational potential. Fishing was king on the White River before the lake, and anglers adapted to the reservoir as soon
as it began to cover the river. Bob Carnes, co-owner of Arkie Lures in Springdale, said fishing was tremendous in the early days of the lake. Most fishing was done with minnows from aluminum boats with small outboards. “You could tie up to about any cedar tree along a bluff and catch lots of bass with minnows,” Carnes recalled in a circa 1993 article by Flip Putthoff in the Rogers Morning News.
Tommy Thomas of Rogers was a member of the lake’s first bass club — the Beaver Lake Bass Club. It had about 40 charter members. About 1966, Larry Phillips won the first-ever Beaver Lake bass fishing championship. During two days of bass fishing, he weighed in 294 pounds of fish. The Bass Angler’s Sportsman Society founder, Ray Scott, held a tournament at Beaver Lake on June 5-7, 1967. The winner won it with a two-day total
of 374 pounds of bass, according to Putthoff’s article.
By 1972, all of the cities in Benton and Washington counties were using Beaver Lake as their water supply. Beaver Lake changed the face of Northwest Arkansas forever. It transformed cheap, rocky ground into prime, lake-front real estate. The reservoir made the region attractive for retirement and as a vacation destination. Its dependable supply of good-quality water contributed to the economic boom that we are still experiencing today.
Data for this column comes from The Fabulous 1960s in Rogers, Arkansas: The People, Life and Events During the Middle of the Century That Made Rogers the Great City That It Is Today (2008, St. Joseph’s Ozark Press).