 It was the filling of a much larger pond, Lake Norman, that led Denver to grow in ways that its early boosters probably could have never fathomed.In 1962, Duke Power built the Cowans Ford Dam, flooding the fertile farmland along the Catawba River "bottoms", the land which had attracted the area's first settlers.Soon, weekend and summer "getaway" homes began to appear lakeside, and after a few years, these were replaced by more luxurious lake homes, as individuals began to move to the area to live near the water.