Lakes, legacies and a road trip to North Platte

I recently took a road trip up to North Platte, which used to be the northern edge of my business footprint and a weekly visit. It’s been too long since I ventured out in that direction, but driving north on 83 made it crystal clear that too much time had passed since I took that route. There were a few new buildings I hadn’t seen before, but I was also struck by the landscape. The long-distance panoramas, rolling hills, and scattered patches of unmelted snow in the canyons were postcard material. I had forgotten how impressive those views can be.

As I passed the turn-off at Red Willow, I was reminded of when my children were both in the single digits, and weekend visits to the lake were ritual. Throughout the summers, my son and I would rise early and either sail, kayak, or simply take in the ramp entertainment in the morning, and then my wife and daughter would join us for lunch at the Marina. Jean and Jim Coady ran the show during most of those years. Now and then, I could grab Jim to talk about local politics, but I can never forget how Jean spoiled and doted over the kids.

While I have been away from our lake these past few years, I’ve been delving into family history and learning about my ancestral Appalachian homeplace in what is now West Virginia. I have never lived there but visited, and they have a lake too. I have seen it from a distance but often wonder how similar it might be to my more familiar point of reference here in Nebraska.

Like ours, their lake is man-made. It wasn’t there when my five-times-great grandfather Jeremiah left to fight in the revolution, just as ours was not present when buffalo roamed the prairie, Sioux and Pawnee were the native inhabitants, and homesteaders staked claims in what is now Nebraska. Both were built in the 1960s for flood control but differ in that theirs provides hydroelectric power, while ours is used for life-giving irrigation.

The names of the two lakes are interesting in their own ways. When we announce our intentions to go to our lake here in Nebraska, we address it in the singular case, but we are actually visiting several entities: Red Willow Dam, Red Willow State Recreation Area, and the Red Willow Reservoir. Those entities are owned and operated by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, at the pleasure of a sometimes heavy-handed Bureau of Reclamation (ask your friends from Cambridge) and periodic input from the Army Corps of Engineers. Rather than sort all that out, area residents often refer to it collectively as “the Willow.”

In the proud tradition of political patronage, the body of water is alternately called “Hugh Butler Lake.” Butler was a dovish, isolationist US Senator from Curtis who served from 1940 to 1952 and is noteworthy for opposing statehood for Hawaii and Alaska and resisting entry into World War II and the subsequent Marshall Plan. I can only imagine that he would get along famously with the current extreme-right and extreme-left factions now joining forces to undermine our support of Ukraine.

The name of the lake in West Virginia is relatively simple as just Summersville Lake State Park, but the naming of the dam was the subject of a few sophomoric chuckles. The dam was built on the Gauley River and flooded a creek valley (aka “holler”) that included the farming village of Gad, West Virginia. The name “Gad” is a biblical reference to one of the twelve tribes of Israel and the Hebrew word for “luck.” Sadly, the relatively few unlucky residents of Gad had to be relocated via eminent domain, and the town was submerged to create the current lake.

The town's name presented a challenge for the Army Corps of Engineers, given their tradition of naming lakes after the nearest town. Suffice it to say that “Gad Dam” was dismissed immediately, and “Gauley Dam” wasn’t viewed much more kindly, so the second nearest town was invoked, and Summersville Dam” won by default.

As I approach retirement, I wonder where it will take me. On life’s tougher days, I’m ready to move to a sinking island on the East Coast where I can be blown out to sea. More often, returning to my historic roots in Appalachia crosses my mind, but if the lure of the latter includes rolling hills and a body of water to visit, we have those here.