 Of the 2,841 families removed by the Tennessee Valley Authority for the reservoir's construction in the 1930s, nearly all lived on subsistence farms with an average size of .Several of these early inhabitants are buried in cemeteries within the state park's boundaries, namely at Andrews Cemetery atop Andrews Ridge and Harmon Cemetery near the park's headquarters.In the 1920s, several private and public entities began lobbying the federal government for the construction of a dam at the confluence of Cove Creek and the Clinch River to control flooding in the Tennessee Valley (it had been determined that the large volume of water carried by the Clinch to the Tennessee River was partially responsible for rampant flooding in cities such as Dayton and Chattanooga which were downstream from this confluence).