One way to tell a native Charlottean of a certain age is by what that person calls the large body of water to the north of us. If they call it Lake Norman, they are certainly not natives. If they refer to it as the River, they probably are.
As a just-released book, "A History of Lake Norman: Fish Camps to Ferraris" (History Press, $19.99), opens: "Before the lake there was the river." This river was home to the Kawahcatawba, which author Chuck McShane of Davidson calls "less a tribe and more of a loose federation of smaller, related settlements living in several villages that formed a linear band on either side of the river."
McShane covers it all, from William Davidson's Revolutionary War death in 1781 at Cowan's Ford; Buck Duke's and William States Lee's dream of an electrified South; the opening of the Catawba River Bridge in 1908; the flood of 1916; the massive dynamiting of land in September, 1959, for the Cowan's Ford Dam; the construction of the dam in the early 1960s; the filling of the lake; and the rest is history.
In the chapter, "The Lore of the Lake: Tall Tales and Future Challenges," I had hoped to read about the winter the river froze and people could walk from one shore to another. I read about this in the microfilm of an old newspaper -- maybe 1909 or 1919 -- and have always longed for further details. Nothing in this chapter mentions that incredible event.
Nevertheless, the book is engaging and well told.
Meet the Author
October 12th, 2014 at 2pm
Main Street Books
126 S Main St
Davidson, NC 28036
October 18th at 1pm
Charlotte Museum of History
3500 Shamrock Dr
Charlotte, NC 28215
November 8th from 9am-11am
Davis General Store
8940 Old Statesville Rd.
Charlotte, NC 28269
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