Welcome to the Fort Patrick Henry Dam Earth
cache. I chose this location for my first earthcache because I
have wonderful childhood memories of this facility. As a child,
my grandfather used to bring me here on the weekends and we
would have picnics and fishing adventures. This cache will take
you into the Kingsport/Colonial Heights area of Tennessee. The
posted coordinates will take you to a marker plaque that
overlooks the dam. Parking is readily available and is as close
as 20’ from the coordinates. All parts of this cache are
handicapped accessible.
Fort Patrick Henry power plant is controlled
from Boone control building. The Tennessee River
has its headwaters in the mountains of Tennessee, Virginia,
North Carolina and Georgia. The main stream forms at
Knoxville, where the Holston & French Broad Rivers
join.The valley 41,000 square miles receives an
average of 52 inches of rain each year. In terms of water
discharged into the Ohio & Mississippi, The Tennessee
River is about equal in size to the Missouri.The
TVA has harnessed the river with a multi purpose system of
dams and reservoirs which regulates floods, improves
navigation and generates electric power.High
dams on the tributaries create large storage reservoirs which
hold back flood waters releasing them when necessary to
maintain navigation depths downstream and at the same time
generating electric power. The system also protects the lower
Ohio and Mississippi
Valleys.The nine main river dams with their locks,
form a navigation channel 650 miles long from Knoxville to
the Ohio River. An important arm of the nations inland
waterway system connecting 20 states.
Having
developed virtually all of the rivers power resources, TVA
has built huge coal burning steam electric plants to help
serve the regions growing power needs. TVA power is sold at
wholesale to cities and rural electric cooperatives which, in
turn, distribute it at retail to homes, farms, businesses and
industry. A few industries and US government defense
installations that use large amounts of power are served
directly by the TVA. The largest of these , using more power
than a large city, are the atomic plants at Oak Ridge,
Tennessee and
Paducah,Kentucky.
To log this earth cache find you must do the following.
1. Navigate to the posted coordinates. This will take you to a
concrete and metal plaque that overlooks the dam.
2. Take your picture at this location and upload it to the cache
page. The dam must be in the background.
3. Read the following two questions and email me the answers to
both of them. The answers can be found around the coordinate
location.
a. The plaque (located at the posted coordinates) states that the
dam is a certain height and width. What are these two sizes?
b. The welcome sign (located approximately 90' from the posted
coordinates) states that the dam is a slightly different size. What
are these two sizes?
I hope you enjoy this earth cache as much as I have in the research
and placement of it. It has been a memorable and learning
experience for me.