Episode 2: The Dam Plans and Deliverance
Episode Summary: While paddlers like Fritz Orr were just beginning to test the limits of the Chattooga’s wild rapids, other plans were being made to silence them forever. In this episode, we uncover the Army Corps of Engineers’ ambitious proposal to build a “staircase of still lakes,” a series of dams that would have submerged all 50 miles of the river, drowning legendary rapids like Jawbone and Sock-‘Em-Dog underwater. The fight to save the river goes all the way to the White House, where President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the landmark Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. But the act only gives the Chattooga a temporary reprieve, not permanent protection. As the clock ticks, the river’s fate finds an unlikely champion in a cluttered office in Columbia, South Carolina, where author James Dickey is wrestling with a novel about a canoe trip gone horribly wrong—a story that would eventually be called Deliverance.
In this episode, you’ll learn about:
- The historic first descent of the Chattooga’s Section Four in 1964 by four paddlers in primitive gear.
- The Army Corps of Engineers’ detailed plans to build four sequential dams on the Chattooga River.
- The political battle behind the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, including the deal-making required to get it passed.
- How James Dickey’s canoe trips and a vision he had in Italy inspired him to write his novel, Deliverance.
- The central theme of the novel: the tension between civilization and wilderness, and the race to see wild places before they are gone forever.
Join us next time for the conclusion of our story, where we go behind the scenes of the chaotic movie set of Deliverance, meet a future president who becomes the river’s champion, and witness the final political battle that sealed the Chattooga’s fate.
