Farm for Sale; Have TVA: The Impact of the Tennessee
Valley Authority on the
Multi-State Region and the Nation
By Alexandra Belzley, Senior at St. Francis High School
One of many measures pushed through by
Franklin Roosevelt in response to the crisis of the depression, the
Tennessee Valley Authority is a federal corporation that was
created, according to its charter, "to improve the navigability and
to provide for the flood control of the Tennessee River; to provide
for reforestation and the proper use of marginal lands in the
Tennessee Valley; to provide for the agricultural and industrial
development of said valley" (ourdocuments.gov). Signed by Roosevelt
on May 18, 1933, the TVA Act of 1933 birthed both a jumpstart to an
impoverished region and a semi-socialist beacon of rebuilding in an
era ravaged by hopelessness. The TVA built itself upon the ideas of
Theodore Roosevelt's chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, who proposed
an unprecedented unity and interdependence of 'the water, land,
forests, farmland, and other natural resources" (Van Fleet 22).
Roosevelt recognized in the TVA not only a chance for improvement
of "navigability...of the Tennessee River...[and] agricultural and
industrial development of its valley' but for a wide-reaching,
inspiring manifestation of that dual American spirit of goodwill
and industry; the TVA Act of 1933 "contributed to the general sense
of vitality and change, the burgeoning of hope" in an area
particularly devastated by the Great Depression (Owen 19). As a
national turning point, the creation of the Tennessee Valley
Authority marked a novel approach to social improvement through
government interference. As a regional turning point, the
Authority's sort-term effects appropriated the Tennessee River
Valley's natural resources for energy and other improvements; TVA
as a long-term turning point proved destructive to the very
ecosystem it had promised to improve... Read
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