My home town, is a
HALF mile down
Maps!
Small Appalachian towns, if they can even be called such, often elude the eyes of mapmakers, and often times can only be seen as one word on a map of a broader region, if even granted that privilege. Fortunately, in the case of Butler and Loyston, we are able to find evidence, even if small, of these towns existence. Be sure to click on the photos to fully examine its content.
[1,2]
Above is an ArcGis map I created from data of dams in America, specifically focusing on those owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The two "dam" icons show the two dams talked about in the scope of this project- Watauga Dam and Norris Dam.
On the left is another map of the Tennessee Valley Region showing not only dams, but steam plants.
Maps of the Watauga Valley Region
Above is a section taken from a 1973 map of Tennessee highways. Zooming in, one can see the location of New Butler (just called Butler) right above Watauga Lake and the bigger town of Elizabethton to the left of the lake.
[4]
This is a map specifically of the Watauga Reservoir created in 1950, shortly after the floodgates opened that created Watauga Lake. Again, the relocated Butler (also called Carderview at the time) is located on the northern side of the lake.
[5, 6]
Taken from the United States Geographical Survey, aerial photographs show what the Watauga Reservoir looked like shortly before the dam opened (1947) and two years after (1950). Though it can be hard to see without zooming in, Elizabethton is on the northwest corner, to the left of ridge. Because Butler was mostly comprised of farm tracts, their existence is unclear from these photos alone. By 1950, the lake further washed away the town although the "new" Butler is easier to see in these photographs to the North of the lake.
Maps of the Norris Reservoir Region
[7]
The map above is one of the few that actually contain Loyston, although when seeing where the town is, it is placed under the water (the 9 written in red on the zoomed image on the left). The map shows other businesses and cemeteries that were inundated as well.
On the left is a map from 1917. Although the town had yet to be inundated at this time, and people have lived in the area for over 100 years, it still was not big enough to have its name on the state highway map. The map on the left updated 60 years later shows how the lake modified the landscape.