J.C. Freeman speaks to the MDCS eighth grade class about life in Almond before Fontana Lake. Behind him is a map of Swain County showing the National Park, the 44,000 acres of north shore land added to the park in 1943, and the area to be covered by the proposed lake.

J.C. Freeman Speaks to MDCS 8th Grade as Part of Studies on Hazel Creek and Proctor

             Almond resident J.C. Freeman was a guest speaker in the MDCS eighth grade classroom on September 24, as the class continued its preparation for a week of October field studies at Hazel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Mr. Freeman, who is 80 years old and grew up in the town of Almond before Fontana Lake was built, is one of the last living residents who remained when most were displaced. He brought with him a 1927 map of Swain County showing the National Park and the towns now covered by the lake.

              Mr. Freeman described his experience as a teenager at Almond High School during the last year of its operation when teachers gathered students in the auditorium and told them the dam would be built, the land would be covered with water, and people would have to move out. Almond High School was taken down and parts of it were reused to build a new Almond School (now SCC’s Swain Center) and Swain County Schools’s current bus garage; Mr. Freeman finished his final high school year at Bryson City.      

              MDCS students also had the benefit of hearing first-hand how TVA prepared the land for the lake. “The walnut was taken out, but the rest of the trees were piled up and burned,” Freeman said, and “a lot of good farmland was covered by water.” In addition, unless residents could disassemble and take their houses with them when they moved, homes were burned as well. Many young men who had served in the military came home to find their families gone, with no way of learning where they had gone.

              Although the eighth grade is studying Duane Oliver’s “Hazel Creek From Then ‘Til Now” and Lance Holland’s “Fontana,” guest speakers like Mr. Freeman provide important primary sources of information for the students. Their week-long camping trip to Proctor will combine field studies in history, social studies, and science, and will form the basis of an extended focus on Hazel Creek.