dam sites. Early TVA plans suggested the construction of a dam along the Little Tennessee River at its mouth at the Tennessee River adjacent to Bussell Island. This later became known as the Fort Loudoun Extension, an expansion of the adjacent Fort Loudoun Dam. However, the project was canceled on October 20, 1942 because of a lack of federal funding resulting from wartime issues. In 1959, TVA chairman Red Wagner approved the restart of project development on the Fort Loudoun Extension, now named the Tellico Project. The justification for the project was to improve the economic conditions of the Little Tennessee watershed, through land and recreational development. This project, which encompassed acreage in Loudon, Blount, and Monroe counties, became known as the City of Timberlake Plan, named for journalist Henry Timberlake who explored the Cherokee villages that once occupied the area. Timberlake, the TVA's ambitious attempt at creating a city from scratch, aimed at providing a high-quality and self-sufficient city supporting an estimated population of 42,000. The project was promoted as a nationwide demonstration of land use initiatives and economic development for the poor rural area of the Little Tennessee Valley, to transform it into a thriving economic urban center. The Tellico Dam component of the Timberlake initiative was planned to provide a large-size reservoir for water sports for recreation purposes and for freight transport via barge for proposed industrial sites that would get access to the Tennessee River through a canal. Despite no plans for generating electricity at the Tellico Dam site, the canal that was part of the project enabled an extra 23 MW of power generation capacity by diverting the flow of the Little Tennessee upstream of Fort Loudoun Dam. The Timberlake project obtained support with the announcement of major investment from the Boeing Corporation along with Congressional aid. In 1974, the Tennessee state legislature unsuccessfully proposed a bill seeking to incorporate the Timberlake area into a city. The plans for the City of Timberlake never fully materialized and were discontinued in 1975 following pullout from Boeing, who cited the project as not economically feasible. Property acquisition and eminent domain The Tellico Dam project required the acquisition of nearly of property for its development. The reservoir created by the dam was forecast to extend over with an extra in flood control reserves. For the remaining area, TVA allocated for residential, recreational, and industrial development as part of