Melton Hill Lake
A 56-mile Clinch River reservoir stretching from the Norris Dam tailwater down to Melton Hill Dam near Knoxville. The only TVA tributary dam with a navigation lock, a pool that barely moves year-round, and a shoreline split between private owners and the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation.
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Melton Hill Dam impounds the Clinch River just south of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, creating a reservoir that stretches nearly 56 miles upstream to the base of Norris Dam. TVA built the dam in the early 1960s — construction ran 1960 to 1963, with the first generator online in July 1964 — specifically to extend the Tennessee Valley's continuous navigation channel up the Clinch as far as Clinton. That navigation purpose is still visible today: Melton Hill is the only TVA dam on a tributary stream, rather than the Tennessee River itself, equipped with a working navigation lock, and the reservoir remains navigable for barge traffic 38 miles from the dam to Clinton.
At 5,470 to 5,690 acres (sources vary slightly depending on survey year) and 193 miles of shoreline, Melton Hill is a mid-size reservoir by Tennessee standards, but its character is shaped by two unusual facts. First, it is a run-of-river project with essentially no seasonal drawdown — the water level typically fluctuates less than two feet daily, operating between elevation 793 and 795 feet. Second, much of its northwest shoreline is federal land tied to the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation, while the opposing shoreline is predominantly privately owned — a direct legacy of the lake's construction, which required TVA to acquire land from the Atomic Energy Commission in a swap that gave TVA the shoreline near the dam in exchange for land elsewhere on Watts Bar Lake.
What Buyers Need to Know First
Two facts define ownership on Melton Hill Lake more than anything else. The first is water stability: unlike Norris, Douglas, or Cherokee Lakes covered elsewhere on this site, Melton Hill does not have a dramatic winter drawdown to plan around, because it is managed as a run-of-river project rather than a seasonal storage reservoir. The second is the lake's unusual cool-water fishery, a direct result of the cold water TVA releases from Norris Dam upstream — a fact that shapes which fish thrive here and which struggle, and one that surprises anglers moving from a warmer, more typical Tennessee bass lake.
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