What do you really see here? Briefly, there are a navigation lock 60 by 360 feet, a concrete spillway, a concrete powerhouse intake section, a concrete bulkhead section, and an earth embankment on each side. It calls for a long stretch of the legs to walk from one end to the other. The spillway section which includes eighteen piers, is 864 feet long. The eighteen gates are forty feet wide and forty feet high. The earth embankment to our left on the north side, is 1,390 feet in length; the embankment on our right, or south side, is 3,000 feet long. The total length is approximately 5,800 feet or a little more than a mile. The spillway section has a width of eighty-two feet at its base. Including the apron, its width increases to a hundred and twenty-five feet. The power station with its three units has a generating capacity of 81,000 kilowatts. There are three hydraulic turbines, and one more can be added. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933, passed by Congress, gave power to the board to construct dams in the Tennessee River. Accordingly, the TVA began work on the Chickamauga Dam, January 13, 1936. The project was finished January 31, 1941, or five years after the work was started. The filling of the reservoir was begun January 15, 1940. In that time 2,510,800 cubic yards of earth were handled and 491,800 cubic yards of concrete poured. The total cost of constructing the Chickamauga Dam, including the cost of acquiring all the lands, totaled thirty-eight million dollars. It is well to remember that the water shed of the Tennessee River embraces 40,910 square miles. Believe it or not, about half of that area is found above the Chickamauga Dam. This upper basin has an average rainfall of 50.8 inches. LOOKING WESTWARD Let us now turn our backs to the Chickamauga Lake for a glimpse towards the west. To the southwest, we see Lookout Mountain standing like a bright cameo in a position as if it were looking down on Chattanooga. To our right, we view the head of another rocky monster that is looking southward. This is Signal Mountain, which is simply the local name for the southern end of Waldens Ridge. A little to our left, in the background between Signal and Lookout Mountains, stands Raccoon Mountain. These are parts of the Cumberlands and are plateaus, each of them being quite flat on its top. Their average altitude is approximately 2,000 feet above the sea. The Cumberlands were so named by Dr. Thomas Walker in 1748 in honor of the Duke of Cumberland, William Augustus, who two years previous had defeated the Scotch in the battle of Culloden. Following that bloody event, the Duke was so bitterly hated that the early Scotch settlers in America refused to call the mountains by the name _Cumberland_, preferring to speak of them by their Cherokee name _Ouisoto Mountains_, (pronounced We-soto).