"Fort Loudoun on the Little Tennessee," historian Philip Hamer suggested the fort's earthworks were still discernible. With sporadic support from the state, and from the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration via the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression, preservationists researched the fort's history and began reconstructing the fort, starting in 1935. The Fort Loudoun Association, which had been founded in 1933, maintained the reconstructed fort as a public park. They arranged for further excavations over the subsequent three decades. The fort was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1965. The Fort Loudoun Association was one of several groups that opposed the Tennessee Valley Authority's proposed Tellico Dam at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River in the 1960s, as the fort would be flooded by the dam's reservoir. At a contentious public meeting on the proposed dam in 1964, legendary local judge Sue K. Hicks, the Fort Loudoun Association's president, engaged in a verbal confrontation with TVA Chairman Aubrey Wagner. TVA eventually agreed to fund the raising of land and reconstruction of the fort on the new site, above the water level. Because the flooding would submerge known historic and prehistoric sites, including several Cherokee towns, the agency funded a survey and extensive archaeological excavations in the valley. These were conducted by the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in 1975–1976. The FLA turned over ownership of the fort to the State of Tennessee in 1978 for establishment of a state park. Archaeological work and reconstruction The Fort Loudoun Association and the Works Progress Administration launched the "Fort Loudoun Restoration Project" in September 1935, with plans to reconstruct the fort based on historical and archaeological research. Excavations at the site, which began in February 1936, were supervised by Hobart S. Cooper. Cooper was advised by archaeologists William S. Webb and Thomas M.N. Lewis. Historians Samuel Cole Williams, Philip Hamer, and Mary Rothrock provided historical research, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided engineering advice. These excavations determined the locations of the inner and outer palisades, the powder magazine, and the chimney bases of several structures. Beginning in 1955, a series of minor excavations were conducted by Ellsworth Brown, Director of the Fort Loudoun Association. These excavations attempted to determine the location of the fort's flagstaff, and explored a structure in the northern part of the fort thought to be Paul Demeré's quarters. Brown conducted further excavations in 1957 to explore