A small coffer dam was built across Deep Creek. With the exception of finishing details work on the project was almost complete. After cutting off the flow of water in Deep Creek, workmen quickly began to seal the by-pass tunnel under the huge impoundment dam. When the last bucket of concrete was poured, the tunnel was effectively plugged in mid-March 1925.

Very slowly water began to accumulate at the foot of the impoundment dam that had been under construction for over a year, and Deep Creek Lake was born.

Liquid Power

Construction work on the project began on December 1, 1923, and it was the culmination of a 20 year dream and speculation by Garrett County business men to harness the water of the Youghiogheny River watershed for hydro-electric power. The river's precipitous drops for a total 900 feet between Crellin and Friendsville, gave the watershed water an enormous horsepower potential for generating electricity. There were at least four possible locations for dams along the river to take advantage of this change in elevation. It was an ideal geographical situation, with the discharge water of each dam going into the next one.

Unfortunately, only one dam of the four was ever built, improvements in high voltage transmission from coal-fired steam generating plants was improved to the point that they were more cost efficient than hydro-electric plants.

First Things First

Creation of Deep Creek Lake and the electric generating station was a three-fold process. Land had to be purchased, an impoundment dam had to be constructed, and all the trees had to be removed from the area to be inundated.

Purchase of the land was handled by an Oakland corporation called the Eastern Land Corporation. Almost 8,000 acres of land along Deep Creek and its tributaries were purchased. only 4,500 acres of this area were to be inundated, but it meant the ruination of many farms whose owners said, "all or nothing".

The impoundment of the dam was an earth filled dam with a concrete core wall in the center. It was over a year in construction being 1,300 feet long, 450 feet wide at the face and sloping 24 feet at the top. Final work after the water began to collect behind the dam was to finish off the earth top, the core wall top, and spillway.

Thousands of trees grew in the valley of Deep Creek and its tributaries. They were cut down with the smaller branches burned in great bond fires, and the logs hauled away to saw mills. Only the stumps were left. With such a massive tree cutting program in such short time, hundreds of logs got by passed and floated around in the lake after it filled with water. These random logs were eventually collected, and they too went to saw mills. However, for the next twenty years, in summer there were stumps that had broken loose from the bottom of the lake and floated to the top.

When it was completed, 1,000 men had worked on the project, 12 mile of railroad had been built, and 15 miles of primary and secondary roads had been relocated. Total cost of the project was over $9,000,000

The Youghiogheny Hydro Electric Corporation

The corporation formed to launch the project was the Youghiogheny Hydro Electric Corporation. The actual construction work was one of the largest corporate projects ever undertaken at that time in Garrett County, exceeded only by the building of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad three quarters of a century earlier.

Charles Hawley and Company Inc., of Washington D.C. was the primary contractor for the whole project. This company set up headquarters at Third and Oak Streets in Oakland, with field offices at the dam site and the power house site. A temporary telephone line connected the field offices and it was connected to the Oakland office through the regular telephone system.

Work on different parts of the project stretched northward all the way from Oakland to the Maryland - Pennsylvania Line, and eastward along Deep Creek to near Swanton.

West of Oakland, 12 miles of standard gauge railroad were built to connect the power house and dam sites with the B. & O. Railroad. (Part of this railroad followed the old George Browning narrow gauge lumber railroad.) A two mile tunnel was dug from the dam to the power house to carry the water for the generator turbines. In the opposite direction, men cut down trees for 11 miles along Deep Creek and up many of its tributaries. Meanwhile, the right-of-way for the transmission lines was cut from the power house to the Maryland - Pennsylvania boundary line to connect with the Pennsylvania Electric Corporation lines.

A stone quarry was opened up along the section of railroad that went to the power house. It produced the sand and crushed stone for the powerhouse foundations, the cored of the wall of the dam, roads that had to be relocated and all of the other concrete work associated with the project.

The Lake Grows Up

After the tunnel was plugged in March 1925, there was the expectation that it would take six or eight months for the lake to fill. This figure was based on water flow measurement of Deep Creek prior o the construction of the dam. However, heavy rains and snow during March and April changed this figure dramatically.

By the first of April, automobile passengers traveling past the lake on the State Road (now U.S. 219) could see the water rising under the highway bridge. The abandoned section of State Road that crossed the lake bottom east of the bridge was covered with water. Near the present Point View Inn, only the upright sides of a small concrete bridge marked the location of the old State Road in that spot. A week later, even these walls had disappeared under the surface of the water. As successive weeks passed and April turned into May, it was evident that the lake would soon be full.

Finally, at 4P.M. on May 26, 1925, the switch was thrown at the power house, and the hydro-electric plant "went on line." The dream of harnessing water of the Youghiogheny River and its tributaries for power had become reality.