Qualla: Smith Mountain Lake

Smith Mountain Lake: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USGS, Public domain. The proposal had been sitting on the shelf since the late 1920s: dam the Roanoke River and the Blackwater where they meet at the Smith Mountain gorge, drown the valley above the dam, and harvest the falling water as electricity. It took until 1960 for shovels to actually break ground. Construction finished in 1963. The lake itself crept toward full pond over the next three years, reaching its normal level in March 1966 — 20,600 acres of water, more than 500 miles of shoreline, and the largest lake contained entirely within the Commonwealth of Virginia. What had been tobacco farms and timber land was suddenly a coastline.

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Image: USGS | Public domain

Smith Mountain Lake: The Rural Decade

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Virginia State Parks staff, CC BY 2.0. The 1960s and most of the 1970s passed slowly at the new lake. Roads were narrow. Marinas provided most of the public access. The few residential developments tended toward small trailer parks and modest fishing cabins. Tobacco and other agriculture continued in the surrounding r...

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Image: Virginia State Parks staff | CC BY 2.0

Smith Mountain Lake: Lakefront, Boomtown

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Des Runyan, CC BY 2.0. Residential growth picked up steadily through the late 1980s and 1990s, and it kept going upscale. Large lakefront houses arrived. Then condominiums. Then communities centered on golf courses. Retirees from the Northeast started showing up in numbers, alongside people commuting t...

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Image: Des Runyan | CC BY 2.0

Smith Mountain Lake: Recreation, Stripers, and a State Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bernini123, CC0. Boating, water skiing, wakeboarding, jet skis, and sailing are the surface-level pleasures. Underneath, the fishing has become a serious draw — particularly for striped bass. Fingerlings are grown out from stripers that have run from downstream Kerr Reservoir up to the vicinity o...

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Image: Bernini123 | CC0

Smith Mountain Lake: Who Runs the Lake?

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Des Runyan, CC BY 2.0. American Electric Power — operating now through subsidiary Appalachian Power — is licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to operate the Smith Mountain Project. The first license ran fifty years. In 1998 AEP started the relicensing process, which the FERC requires to...

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Image: Des Runyan | CC BY 2.0