“Necessity is the mother of invention.” Beautiful Lake James real estate is the result of necessity and “an ounce of prevention.” Not that beauty was the driving force behind decisions. But magical natural forces have connected to endow residents of Lake James homes with stunning vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Shortoff Mountain, Linville Gorge, the lush wooded shoreline and trail systems around lakefront Lake James, wondrous underwater scenery, reflective sunsets over the rippling waters, and other people who also appreciate the splendor of living near the Lake James waterfront.
As the story goes, one New York man’s dire medical condition connected him to a visionary doctor, and led to the mining of “White Gold” in the Carolinas. White Gold is electrical energy generated by funneling river and lake waters through turbines. The resulting frothy, turbulent discharge is used for hydroelectric power.
The patient, James Buchanan “Buck” Duke, was a global industrialist and tobacco tycoon. His brother Ben was involved in the Carolina textile industry. And the doctor, W. Gill Wylie, had visions of hydroelectric gold in his head. He contracted an electrical engineer who developed a plan for industrial and financial hydroelectric growth in the South. They presented their $40 million plan to Duke who didn’t bat an eye at the cost. That engineer, William States Lee, along with Wylie and Duke, created Southern Power Company in 1905 and they began acquiring river lands, building hydroelectric stations along the Carolinas. Duke was personally motivated to try out that White Gold to replenish the gardens, fountains, and lake at his New Jersey estate near the Atlantic Ocean while also supplying his brother's manufacturing facilities.
Focus moved to a spot 450 miles from the Atlantic. A trickle at the beginning of the Catawba River high in the Blue Ridge Mountains became instrumental in bringing Dr. Wylie’s vision of electrifying the Catawba River to fruition.
All this was in motion when, in July 1916, two low pressure systems merged over Charleston, South Carolina where the Catawba River enters the Atlantic, creating a hurricane called “The Perfect Storm.” As it moved northwest over Charlotte and Asheville, the raging floods of the Catawba River inflicted tremendous damage. Southern Power Company’s hydroelectric stations suffered greatly.
Back to the drawing board, the men determined that they needed a very large water impoundment area and planned Bridgewater Development. Construction began within a year and that development now called “Lake James.”
As the uppermost impoundment in the system, this lake is fed by cold, clear streams originating in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The streams flow through dense untouched mountain forests and most of the lake’s shoreline also remains undisturbed. The lake is the only impoundment on the Catawba River with the ability to support populations of smallmouth bass, walleye and trout. Water quality monitoring is ongoing and the startlingly clear water weighs in as the cleanest lake around.
The 94 billion gallons of pure water weigh slightly more than an ounce! But the lake prevented millions of dollars of devastation during a more recent hurricane that tested the ecological merit of the Bridgewater project.
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