Qualla: Summersville Lake

Summersville Lake: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Thomas, Public domain. President Lyndon Johnson came down for the dedication on September 3, 1966. He cut the ribbon at the new Summersville Post Office and then officially opened the dam: 390 feet of rock-fill earthwork plugging the Gauley River, the second-largest dam of its kind in the eastern United States. Behind it the water was already rising. Within a few months it would back the Gauley up into a reservoir of 2,700 acres - the largest lake in West Virginia. Two small communities, Gad and Sparks, had been bought out and bulldozed to make room. Today the lake holds them at depths of up to 327 feet, while above the water surface, climbers chalk up on sandstone cliffs, scuba divers practice in some of the clearest fresh water in the state, and the only working lighthouse anywhere in West Virginia flashes from the north shore.

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Image: Ken Thomas | Public domain

Summersville Lake: Building the Dam

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Squashpup, CC BY-SA 3.0. Summersville Dam was authorized by federal flood-control legislation, designed in the late 1950s, and built between 1960 and 1966 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The numbers are impressive: 390 feet tall at the spillway, 2,280 feet long at the crest, holding back 12...

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Image: Squashpup | CC BY-SA 3.0

Summersville Lake: Sport Climbing on the Rim

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarek Tuszyński, CC BY-SA 4.0. The sandstone cliffs surrounding Summersville Lake have become one of the great American sport-climbing destinations. The rock is Nuttall sandstone - the same formation that defines the New River Gorge - and at Summersville it forms vertical and overhanging faces that climbers ha...

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Image: Jarek Tuszyński | CC BY-SA 4.0

Summersville Lake: Underwater and Above

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The lake's clear water - among the clearest in West Virginia, thanks to the bedrock-lined Gauley headwaters - makes it one of the East's better freshwater scuba destinations. Divers come for the visibility, the underwater rock walls, and the deliberately sunk small boat that loca...

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Image: Public domain

Summersville Lake: The Towns Beneath

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carson Maynard / (WT-en) Haem85 at English Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. When the dam closed in 1966, two small communities went under: Gad, on McKee's Creek, and Sparks just downstream. Residents had been bought out, relocated, and given notice. The houses were demolished, but the foundations, roads, and graveyards remained. They are still down there...

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Image: Carson Maynard / (WT-en) Haem85 at English Wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0