History

The Tennessee River’s descent through northern Alabama had long thwarted navigation. A series of shoals around Muscle Shoals and the Elk River dropped the river more than 130 feet over a short stretch, making regular commercial river traffic impossible even after nineteenth-century canal improvements. Congressman Joseph Wheeler introduced legislation as early as 1898 to secure federal funding for Muscle Shoals development. The construction of Wilson Dam upstream in the 1920s opened a navigable channel, but only at high water flows. The stretch remained an obstacle to the economic development of the upper Tennessee Valley.

When Congress created the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933, the Wheeler Dam site was among the first earmarked for construction. Work began on November 21, 1933 — TVA’s second major dam project after Norris Dam — and proceeded on an emergency employment basis. At peak, 4,700 workers were on site. The project required the relocation of 840 families and 176 graves, and the clearance of more than 31,000 acres of land. TVA drew on engineering expertise from the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation for the dam’s structural design. Wheeler Dam was completed at a cost of $87,655,000 on November 9, 1936.

Named for Civil War general and U.S. Congressman Joseph Wheeler, an early champion of federal river development in the Muscle Shoals area, the dam was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016 as part of the Wheeler Hydroelectric Project — recognized for its role in the New Deal transformation of the Tennessee Valley.