Lance Holland discusses moving to Fontana Village and researching on the history of the Fontana dam, Dam Kids -- a group of children whose parents built the dam and who continue to hold reunions--and the North Shore group made up of residents who were forced off their land to allow for the construction of the dam. Holland also talks about the changes the Village had undergone over the years as it changed from a construction village to a resort and the reception to his book on Fontana.

• Creator
  • Holland, Lance
• Contributor
  • Norris, Dustin
• Format
  • Transcripts
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Text
• Date
  • Date interview: 2014-10-31
  • Date: 1940s; 1950s; 1970s;
  • Date digitized: 2015-03-03
• Extent
  • Duration: 9 pages
• Subject - Topic
  • Dams -- Economic aspects
  • Dams -- Social aspects
  • Fontana Dam (N.C.)
  • Fontana Village (N.C.)
  • Holland, Lance
• Location
  • Fontana Village (N.C.)
  • Fontana Dam (N.C.)
  • Graham County (N.C.)
  • North Carolina, Western
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • WCU Oral History Collection - HIST 474/574
• Identifier
  • HL_HIST474_Norris_Holland_2014-10-31_transcript
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Hunter Library

TRANSCRIPT: LANCE HOLLAND Interviewee: LH LANCE HOLLAND Interviewer: DN Dustin Norris Interview Date: October 31, 2014 Location: Bryson City, NC Length: 24:56 START OF INTERVIEW Dustin Norris: Alright if you wouldn't mind starting off stating your name and give us your verbal consent to use the interview? Lance Holland: I'm Lance Holland, and yes you can use the interview. DN: Thank you. I think to start off it might be best to-if you would, tell when you were born, where you grew up, and that kind ofthing just to get some background on you. LH: I was born in 1950 in Atlanta, Georgia. I moved to north Georgia when I was fifteen years old, and moved here to North Carolina in 1978. DN: Is that when you started your work on Fontana? LH: Yeah. DN: 1978? How did that start? LH: I grew up in a part of Atlanta that a lot of the Civil War was fought in. So history was just as much a part of our childhood as our bicycles were. And so when I got to Fontana it was just obvious that this was a very historically interesting area and I should look in to it. Lance Holland DN: The first thing that struck you about Fon-is that where you moved to when you came to North Carolina? LH: No actually I moved up to Banner Elk for one winter. And then- [Phone Rings] we came back to Fontana in the spring. [Interruption, Recorder Turned Off-2:01] 2 DN: So you moved to Banner Elk for a winter and then you just visited Fontana? LH: Well we had already talked to Fontana about working there but the job wasn't available till the spring. So we went up to Banner Elk and my wife worked at the ski area and I built houses. DN: Okay. I know it's probably a huge question but if you could briefly, maybe describe how your research on Fontana was done. LH: Well, I just started gathering information. There was a fair amount of archival stuff at Fontana Village that 1-I'd find a piece here and a piece there and a piece there, and I kind of brought it all together and made a collection out of it. And then as I did that I gained more and more knowledge about what the history of, not only the village but the whole area was. It became-! mean it's obviously interesting stuff. [laughter] So that's kind of how it happened. DN: I guess moving into the village itself, how would you characterize the village at its start, or right when it was being built? As far as utility and- LH: When we first moved to Fontana it really hadn't changed that much from the TV A days. It certainly has now. But many of the cabins were original, even with the same furniture in them. So you really got the feel of what it was like for the people that lived there during construction. And then also over the years, there was a group called the Lance Holland 3 Dam Kids, that were the kids that lived there during the construction period and continue to have reunions. And they have vivid memories about what it was like during the construction period. DN: Yeah we just-me and a colleague of mine, we went to the Dam Kids reunion they just had a few weekends ago. Got to talk to a few of them. So, one big question that I had is, a lot of the Dam Kids traveled with the TV A. Like their families traveled with the TV A from place to place working. Is there evidence of other, maybe at other dams where people get together like that or do those reunions- LH: I've never heard of any other group of TV A workers that have a reunion. There could be I just don't know about it. I have heard that the North Shore people, is the largest group of displaced persons that still gets together with each other. Those were the people that had to leave the North Shore when the dam was built. DN: So they still get together? LH: Well they have decorations on a number of Sundays through, the spring through fall. So that gets them together. Then they have a reunion at Deep Creek usually in September. And they have a Christmas party at Stecoah Valley Center in December. DN: So you would say, then, that Fontana is pretty unique in terms of people identifying with it as a home? LH: Yeah. DN: Do you have any idea why that might be? LH: Well it was because all those people were brought there, and they had one purpose: to build the dam. So that was one of the unique parts about it. I mean, in any Lance Holland other community people do various things, but at Fontana everybody was doing one thing. DN: Was the same kind of patriotic language used at these other dams? LH: I don't know. I've never really studied the other ones very much. But I'm sure it was. Maybe not quite as much because Fontana was the one that was built during the war. So they had a lot of patriotic signs around, like there was one on the front of the cafeteria that said "Work, or Fight." DN: In thinking about your book and-I know the book, The Village of Five Lives, you know we have several copies of that. What are some of the main transitional points for the village that you've found in your research? LH: Well of course when it changed over from a construction village to a resort. 4 And that took a while. One of my favorite quotes is GSI, which is Government Services Incorporated-which originally ran a bunch of hot dog stands on the Mall in Washington. And that was the resort type project they took on. The quote was that they "extended the long arm of productivity and restoration into the wilderness of Western North Carolina." DN: What does that mean for Fontana do you think? LH: Well somebody finally adopted it. DN: So you say the change to the resort town took a while. When would you say it emerged as a resort? LH: About a year after the completion of the dam. And then it wasn't much of a resort, it was just a bunch of cabins on the side of the mountain. [laughter] DN: So people were visiting as early as then? Lance Holland LH: Yeah the dam itself became quite a draw because it's the tallest dam east of the Mississippi River. And particularly engineers would come to take a look at it. It's in such a remote spot, they almost, out of necessity, had to stay there overnight. DN: I know in the Fontana Project book they talk about how it was sort of planned for the reservoir to serve somewhat of a recreational purpose after the- LH: No. They didn't give a shit about recreation. [laughter] That was totally not part of the plan. That's why there's so few recreational amenities around the lake. That wasn't part of the plan. DN: I mean even when they gave justifications for it in those terms? LH: As far as the government's concerned there still is no concern for recreation. If it wasn't for the private entities around the lake there wouldn't be any, you know: There's Cable Cove boat ramp, and there you go, that's all there is. DN: What do you think brings people to the village now? LH: Well, it's in the Smoky Mountains. And now, since Phillips and Jordan took it over and sunk millions of dollars into the place it's pretty nice. There's a-they have a good bit of group business. As a matter of fact, about two weeks ago was the fiftieth anniversary of SEOP A, which is the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association-which was founded at Fontana fifty years ago. And those guys, you know, they make a living writing about stuff. And so it was always a big plus to get any of them to come there because they'd all write a story about the place. So this fiftieth anniversary is-they all came there. That generated probably hundreds of stories about Fontana. And stories, or editorials, are so much more productive than ads are, because people believe stories. Anybody can buy an ad. 5 Lance Holland 6 DN: These were seen nationally? LH: Yeah they could-there's no telling where they went to. Because these guys, you know, they're the cream of the crop of southeastern outdoor writers. So they could be in-well Jim Casada for example is one of them and he writes articles for the Smoky Mountain Times. He also writes articles for Field and Stream. So they-it'd be pretty hard to track down all the articles that came out of this anniversary get together. DN: So, you say when the new management came in that brought a bunch of new money and new ideas. You feel like it improved the village as far as the- LH: Oh yeah. It had gotten pretty run down. And Phillips and Jordan is an interesting company. It was started by two old guys from Robbinsville, and it's the largest land clearing company in the world. They were the primary contractor that cleaned up after Katrina, they were the primary contractor that cleaned up after 9/11. This is a-it's a huge company and it was started by two old, good old boys from Robbinsville. [laughter] DN: So they still do that sort of thing on top of- LH: Oh yeah. Yeah that's their primary business. The village is just sort of a sideline for them. · DN: I know some of the Dam Kids voiced some concern over the future of the village if they don't-they see it as a place where there's not that much to do, like you were saying. There's not a whole lot of recreational infrastructure there, that you could go out and do anything. Do you think that's going to change any time soon, or do you see that even? Maybe you disagree. Lance Holland LH: You know, there's no golf course, ok, there you go. But there's, you know, swimming and there's the big rec hall and mini-golf. There's hiking, boat rentals ... I see it as a pretty complete recreational resort except for a golf course. I mean it's not for everybody, a lot of people don't like to hike. They want to go ride around on a golf cart. So if that's what you want to do, go someplace where they've got golf carts. [laughter] DN: Or bring your own. [laughter] Well, let's see. I guess, going back to your­like right now, how do you think the village is viewed from outside of the village. 7 LH: I really don't have much of an opinion on that because I haven't had anything to do with it in about fifteen years. My wife still works there but I haven't even been over there in, probably ten years. DN: Really? Well right when your book was being published, I guess that you'd been back and forth all the time? LH: I didn't work there anymore when I was doing the book. I was still-! was working in the movie business but the-in the movies, there's periods where you work your rear off and then there's periods where you don't have a show to work on. And so in those periods when I didn't have a show, that's when I wrote the book. Because I had been gathering the information for twenty years. And I had it all, I just had to put it together and write it down. DN: What kind of reception did your book get around here? LH: It's been very popular, it's in its third printing. It's a whale of a story, I mean I didn't make it up I just wrote it down. [laughter] And so many local people have some sort of connection to the construction either, you know, maybe their grandpa worked on the darn or their family was run out of the North Shore. And that's always been a big ... Lance Holland 8 stumbling block for a lot people. Because the lake only covers 10,400 acres, but they took 44,000 acres because the lake flooded highway 288, which was the only access to the North Shore. And the excuse was that this was during World War II and they didn't have the time or the money to rebuild the road. So they just took all that land. People were very patriotic back then so most of them sold their land willingly, because it was certainly pitched that this was for the war effort. So they sold off and went somewhere else. Not all of them, a few ofthem they had to condemn the land. And there's-there was even a couple of them that wouldn't take the money. Henry and Alice Posey, for example, they wouldn't take the money. And TV A put it in an account in the bank, and its probably still there because they're both dead. [laughter] DN: And I know that's something that hasn't stopped being talked-! mean there's been news stories even in the past two or three years about the road. LH: Yeah, oh yeah. And the big concern of the North Shore people is the government lied to them. They told them they were going to build this road and then they didn't build it. And then finally, three or four years ago, they said they were going to do this cash settlement and now the Parks Service won't release the money. So it's still ... it's still a problem for them. Swain County's done all kinds of stuff to try to get the money but-I think so far they've gotten twelve million but there's supposed to be fifty four million. And the Parks Service just says they're-they can't release the money without more congressional approval. DN: Right. Is that twelve million going to the county? LH: It actually goes into an account that's administered by the state ofNorth Carolina and the county gets the interest off of it that they can spend. To spend any of the Lance Holland 9 primary funds it would have to be voted on by the people of the county. And most people don't even consider that because the-it's more beneficial to keep the primary funds and spend the interest than it is to spend the primary funds. DN: Well do you see any further resolution coming or do you think it's going to kind of be lost? LH: I don't know. I don't know ... And that's about enough from me. DN: Well I appreciate it sir. I thank you for your time. LH: You're quite welcome. END OF INTERVIEW Transcribed by Dustin Norris, November 12, 2014.

Lance Holland discusses moving to Fontana Village and researching on the history of the Fontana dam, Dam Kids -- a group of children whose parents built the dam and who continue to hold reunions--and the North Shore group made up of residents who were forced off their land to allow for the construction of the dam. Holland also talks about the changes the Village had undergone over the years as it changed from a construction village to a resort and the reception to his book on Fontana.

• Creator
  • Holland, Lance
• Contributor
  • Norris, Dustin
• Format
  • Sound recordings
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Sound
• Date
  • Date interview: 2014-10-31
  • Date: 1970s; 1940s; 1950s;
  • Date digitized: 2015-03-03
• Extent
  • Duration: 00:02:00 (sound recording)
  • Duration: 00:22:54 (sound recording)
  • Duration: 9 pages (transcript)
• Subject - Topic
  • Dams -- Economic aspects
  • Dams -- Social aspects
  • Fontana Dam (N.C.)
  • Fontana Village (N.C.)
  • Holland, Lance
• Location
  • Fontana Dam (N.C.)
  • Fontana Village (N.C.)
  • Graham County (N.C.)
  • North Carolina, Western
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • WCU Oral History Collection - HIST 474/574
• Identifier
  • HL_HIST474_Norris_Holland_2014-10-31
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Hunter Library

TRANSCRIPT: LANCE HOLLAND Interviewee: LH LANCE HOLLAND Interviewer: DN Dustin Norris Interview Date: October 31, 2014 Location: Bryson City, NC Length: 24:56 START OF INTERVIEW Dustin Norris: Alright if you wouldn't mind starting off stating your name and give us your verbal consent to use the interview? Lance Holland: I'm Lance Holland, and yes you can use the interview. DN: Thank you. I think to start off it might be best to-if you would, tell when you were born, where you grew up, and that kind ofthing just to get some background on you. LH: I was born in 1950 in Atlanta, Georgia. I moved to north Georgia when I was fifteen years old, and moved here to North Carolina in 1978. DN: Is that when you started your work on Fontana? LH: Yeah. DN: 1978? How did that start? LH: I grew up in a part of Atlanta that a lot of the Civil War was fought in. So history was just as much a part of our childhood as our bicycles were. And so when I got to Fontana it was just obvious that this was a very historically interesting area and I should look in to it. Lance Holland DN: The first thing that struck you about Fon-is that where you moved to when you came to North Carolina? LH: No actually I moved up to Banner Elk for one winter. And then- [Phone Rings] we came back to Fontana in the spring. [Interruption, Recorder Turned Off-2:01] 2 DN: So you moved to Banner Elk for a winter and then you just visited Fontana? LH: Well we had already talked to Fontana about working there but the job wasn't available till the spring. So we went up to Banner Elk and my wife worked at the ski area and I built houses. DN: Okay. I know it's probably a huge question but if you could briefly, maybe describe how your research on Fontana was done. LH: Well, I just started gathering information. There was a fair amount of archival stuff at Fontana Village that 1-I'd find a piece here and a piece there and a piece there, and I kind of brought it all together and made a collection out of it. And then as I did that I gained more and more knowledge about what the history of, not only the village but the whole area was. It became-! mean it's obviously interesting stuff. [laughter] So that's kind of how it happened. DN: I guess moving into the village itself, how would you characterize the village at its start, or right when it was being built? As far as utility and- LH: When we first moved to Fontana it really hadn't changed that much from the TV A days. It certainly has now. But many of the cabins were original, even with the same furniture in them. So you really got the feel of what it was like for the people that lived there during construction. And then also over the years, there was a group called the Lance Holland 3 Dam Kids, that were the kids that lived there during the construction period and continue to have reunions. And they have vivid memories about what it was like during the construction period. DN: Yeah we just-me and a colleague of mine, we went to the Dam Kids reunion they just had a few weekends ago. Got to talk to a few of them. So, one big question that I had is, a lot of the Dam Kids traveled with the TV A. Like their families traveled with the TV A from place to place working. Is there evidence of other, maybe at other dams where people get together like that or do those reunions- LH: I've never heard of any other group of TV A workers that have a reunion. There could be I just don't know about it. I have heard that the North Shore people, is the largest group of displaced persons that still gets together with each other. Those were the people that had to leave the North Shore when the dam was built. DN: So they still get together? LH: Well they have decorations on a number of Sundays through, the spring through fall. So that gets them together. Then they have a reunion at Deep Creek usually in September. And they have a Christmas party at Stecoah Valley Center in December. DN: So you would say, then, that Fontana is pretty unique in terms of people identifying with it as a home? LH: Yeah. DN: Do you have any idea why that might be? LH: Well it was because all those people were brought there, and they had one purpose: to build the dam. So that was one of the unique parts about it. I mean, in any Lance Holland other community people do various things, but at Fontana everybody was doing one thing. DN: Was the same kind of patriotic language used at these other dams? LH: I don't know. I've never really studied the other ones very much. But I'm sure it was. Maybe not quite as much because Fontana was the one that was built during the war. So they had a lot of patriotic signs around, like there was one on the front of the cafeteria that said "Work, or Fight." DN: In thinking about your book and-I know the book, The Village of Five Lives, you know we have several copies of that. What are some of the main transitional points for the village that you've found in your research? LH: Well of course when it changed over from a construction village to a resort. 4 And that took a while. One of my favorite quotes is GSI, which is Government Services Incorporated-which originally ran a bunch of hot dog stands on the Mall in Washington. And that was the resort type project they took on. The quote was that they "extended the long arm of productivity and restoration into the wilderness of Western North Carolina." DN: What does that mean for Fontana do you think? LH: Well somebody finally adopted it. DN: So you say the change to the resort town took a while. When would you say it emerged as a resort? LH: About a year after the completion of the dam. And then it wasn't much of a resort, it was just a bunch of cabins on the side of the mountain. [laughter] DN: So people were visiting as early as then? Lance Holland LH: Yeah the dam itself became quite a draw because it's the tallest dam east of the Mississippi River. And particularly engineers would come to take a look at it. It's in such a remote spot, they almost, out of necessity, had to stay there overnight. DN: I know in the Fontana Project book they talk about how it was sort of planned for the reservoir to serve somewhat of a recreational purpose after the- LH: No. They didn't give a shit about recreation. [laughter] That was totally not part of the plan. That's why there's so few recreational amenities around the lake. That wasn't part of the plan. DN: I mean even when they gave justifications for it in those terms? LH: As far as the government's concerned there still is no concern for recreation. If it wasn't for the private entities around the lake there wouldn't be any, you know: There's Cable Cove boat ramp, and there you go, that's all there is. DN: What do you think brings people to the village now? LH: Well, it's in the Smoky Mountains. And now, since Phillips and Jordan took it over and sunk millions of dollars into the place it's pretty nice. There's a-they have a good bit of group business. As a matter of fact, about two weeks ago was the fiftieth anniversary of SEOP A, which is the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association-which was founded at Fontana fifty years ago. And those guys, you know, they make a living writing about stuff. And so it was always a big plus to get any of them to come there because they'd all write a story about the place. So this fiftieth anniversary is-they all came there. That generated probably hundreds of stories about Fontana. And stories, or editorials, are so much more productive than ads are, because people believe stories. Anybody can buy an ad. 5 Lance Holland 6 DN: These were seen nationally? LH: Yeah they could-there's no telling where they went to. Because these guys, you know, they're the cream of the crop of southeastern outdoor writers. So they could be in-well Jim Casada for example is one of them and he writes articles for the Smoky Mountain Times. He also writes articles for Field and Stream. So they-it'd be pretty hard to track down all the articles that came out of this anniversary get together. DN: So, you say when the new management came in that brought a bunch of new money and new ideas. You feel like it improved the village as far as the- LH: Oh yeah. It had gotten pretty run down. And Phillips and Jordan is an interesting company. It was started by two old guys from Robbinsville, and it's the largest land clearing company in the world. They were the primary contractor that cleaned up after Katrina, they were the primary contractor that cleaned up after 9/11. This is a-it's a huge company and it was started by two old, good old boys from Robbinsville. [laughter] DN: So they still do that sort of thing on top of- LH: Oh yeah. Yeah that's their primary business. The village is just sort of a sideline for them. · DN: I know some of the Dam Kids voiced some concern over the future of the village if they don't-they see it as a place where there's not that much to do, like you were saying. There's not a whole lot of recreational infrastructure there, that you could go out and do anything. Do you think that's going to change any time soon, or do you see that even? Maybe you disagree. Lance Holland LH: You know, there's no golf course, ok, there you go. But there's, you know, swimming and there's the big rec hall and mini-golf. There's hiking, boat rentals ... I see it as a pretty complete recreational resort except for a golf course. I mean it's not for everybody, a lot of people don't like to hike. They want to go ride around on a golf cart. So if that's what you want to do, go someplace where they've got golf carts. [laughter] DN: Or bring your own. [laughter] Well, let's see. I guess, going back to your­like right now, how do you think the village is viewed from outside of the village. 7 LH: I really don't have much of an opinion on that because I haven't had anything to do with it in about fifteen years. My wife still works there but I haven't even been over there in, probably ten years. DN: Really? Well right when your book was being published, I guess that you'd been back and forth all the time? LH: I didn't work there anymore when I was doing the book. I was still-! was working in the movie business but the-in the movies, there's periods where you work your rear off and then there's periods where you don't have a show to work on. And so in those periods when I didn't have a show, that's when I wrote the book. Because I had been gathering the information for twenty years. And I had it all, I just had to put it together and write it down. DN: What kind of reception did your book get around here? LH: It's been very popular, it's in its third printing. It's a whale of a story, I mean I didn't make it up I just wrote it down. [laughter] And so many local people have some sort of connection to the construction either, you know, maybe their grandpa worked on the darn or their family was run out of the North Shore. And that's always been a big ... Lance Holland 8 stumbling block for a lot people. Because the lake only covers 10,400 acres, but they took 44,000 acres because the lake flooded highway 288, which was the only access to the North Shore. And the excuse was that this was during World War II and they didn't have the time or the money to rebuild the road. So they just took all that land. People were very patriotic back then so most of them sold their land willingly, because it was certainly pitched that this was for the war effort. So they sold off and went somewhere else. Not all of them, a few ofthem they had to condemn the land. And there's-there was even a couple of them that wouldn't take the money. Henry and Alice Posey, for example, they wouldn't take the money. And TV A put it in an account in the bank, and its probably still there because they're both dead. [laughter] DN: And I know that's something that hasn't stopped being talked-! mean there's been news stories even in the past two or three years about the road. LH: Yeah, oh yeah. And the big concern of the North Shore people is the government lied to them. They told them they were going to build this road and then they didn't build it. And then finally, three or four years ago, they said they were going to do this cash settlement and now the Parks Service won't release the money. So it's still ... it's still a problem for them. Swain County's done all kinds of stuff to try to get the money but-I think so far they've gotten twelve million but there's supposed to be fifty four million. And the Parks Service just says they're-they can't release the money without more congressional approval. DN: Right. Is that twelve million going to the county? LH: It actually goes into an account that's administered by the state ofNorth Carolina and the county gets the interest off of it that they can spend. To spend any of the Lance Holland 9 primary funds it would have to be voted on by the people of the county. And most people don't even consider that because the-it's more beneficial to keep the primary funds and spend the interest than it is to spend the primary funds. DN: Well do you see any further resolution coming or do you think it's going to kind of be lost? LH: I don't know. I don't know ... And that's about enough from me. DN: Well I appreciate it sir. I thank you for your time. LH: You're quite welcome. END OF INTERVIEW Transcribed by Dustin Norris, November 12, 2014.