Rhea Springs, Tennessee

Rhea Springs was a community once located along the Piney River in Rhea County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Originally established in the 19th century as a health resort, the community was inundated when the completion of Watts Bar Dam by the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded the lower Piney Valley in 1942.[1]

Store and post office in Rhea Springs, photographed in 1940

Rhea Springs, known as "Sulphur Springs" before 1878, developed around a spring rumored to have "healing" qualities.[1] The spring flowed into the banks of the Piney approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) upstream from the river's mouth along the Tennessee River. When the Tennessee Valley Authority began surveying the area for the construction of Watts Bar Dam and reservoir in the late 1930s, they reported a large hotel and seventeen small houses at Rhea Springs. After TVA acquired the community, most of its residents relocated elsewhere in the county or to Chattanooga.[2]

Rhea Springs was the home of Congressman John R. Neal (1836–1889) and the birthplace of his son, Scopes Trial attorney John Randolph Neal, Jr. (1876–1959).[3]

See also

References
  1. Bettye Broyles, Rhea County. Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, 2002. Retrieved: 13 January 2009.
  2. Tennessee Valley Authority, The Watts Bar Project: A Comprehensive Report on the Planning, Design, Construction, and Initial Operations of the Watts Bar Project, Technical Report No. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), p. 355.
  3. Alice Howell, Lucile Deaderick (ed.), Heart of the Valley: A History of Knoxville, Tennessee (East Tennessee Historical Society, 1976), p. 582.



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