The Return of Lake Toxaway: Refilling the Lake and Building Roads
With the dam construction complete, there were now typically 30-50 Lake Toxaway Company workers, many of them locals, at work on the lakebed clearing trees in advance of the refilling water and/or around the lake on road construction projects. In a 1965 article celebrating the successful completion of the project [1], a group of employees who started and stayed with the project were specifically recognized, among them: General Manager Rex Humphrey, Albert Lee, Charlie Rigsby, J.B. Whitmire, Kenneth Banther, Edgar Daves, J.S. Owen, and G.A. Butler.
Listen in as Donny Boyd recalls the “cacophony of sound” he remembers from those days.
One source, Ed Crotts, though not raised in Historic Toxaway, has local relations on both sides of his family and notes that an uncle on his dad’s side, Walt Ledford, worked a bulldozer for Burns Spangler Construction, a contractor on the project. Ledford, now deceased, was a diesel mechanic and did general vehicle maintenance in the area for many years.
As well, Ed has two Owen family uncles who were teens during the dam rebuilding; one of them, Joe Owen, remembers hauling the first load of logs from the dam.
Share Your Stories & Photos!
There are likely many more local tales and unsung heroes of this massive project out there. Please send stories and photos to marketing@historictoxaway.org.
An interesting double-exposure of the Lake Toxaway Company principals overlaid on a construction site at the lakebed.
In a 2009 interview, Reg Heinitsh Jr., who joined his father in the Lake Toxaway enterprise, recalls, “There was basically a forest floating under the lake. I was on a barge every summer for three years pulling logs out of the lake bed.”[2]
John Nichols III, the son of John Nichols Jr and grandson of Reg Heinitsh Sr, recorded a series of interviews in 2011, hoping to preserve the history of the project and recognize some of its local contributors.
The Transylvania Times reported on John’s research and filmmaking in an April 2012 issue; read the entire feature here.
Listen in as John and his father John Nichols Jr visit with Ruth Whitmire, J.B.’s widow, who reflects on her husband and his legacy, and as Charlie and Rosalee Rigsby and family members reminisce about a variety of subjects.
Note: Mrs. Whitmire and Mrs. Rigsby have since passed on, as has Dwight Rigsby, who worked for the Burlingame Property Owners Association.
Watauga Democrat, June 12, 1961
The reference to the ‘dry lakebed’ after the 1916 flood is actually a misnomer. During “the time between the lakes” (as Exie Wilde Hensen, daughter of noted lumberman and photographer Joe Wilde, poetically refers to that timeframe in a recent video interview), several streams continued to meander across the valley through the regrowing forest and joined to drop over the falls (see image at right).
So, one side effect of re-filling the lake was the need to block Toxaway Falls temporarily. Newspaper accounts like the one at left had fun with the idea of a “missing” waterfall.
One local, Claudeen Fisher, recalls that her husband Wilbur and his dad checked the dam daily as the lake was refilling and they were there when the water first flowed over the falls again.
The refilling of the lake basin was completed in September of 1961, with road work and other improvements continuing around the lake.
Lake Toxaway had returned, revitalized and ready for a new era.
Transylvania Times, July 29, 1965
