Lake Jocassee

The creation of Lake Jocassee by Duke Power Company's massive Keowee-Toxaway Project in the late 1960s and early 1970s flooded a quaint mountain valley whose earliest recorded history was in 1539, when Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led an expedition through the present-day Jocassee Gorges.In 1971, hundreds watched the slow retreat of the Whitewater, Thompson, Horsepasture, Toxaway, and Keowee Rivers as they formed one large lake, smothering homes, lands, and farms in the process. Years of mo