The reporter Ernie Pyle drives to the nearly finished Norris Dam in 1935, and writes about the Tennesee Valley Authority.
Music: “Kickin’ Mule,” played by the King Family, FSA recording, Library of Congress; “Non troppo lento” from piano quartet by Aaron Copland, by BannerArts, from Washington Musica Viva; “Arkansas Traveler,” by Mrs. Ben Scott and Myrtle B. Wilkinson, from the WPA California Folk Music Project, Library of Congress; “Traveling to Louisiana,” by Lobo Loco, from the Free Music Archive, freemusicarchive.org.
Sounds from freesound.org: users craigsmith (wind, red-tailed hawk, construction site, typewriter, army convoy, machine guns, rain and thunder); equiloud (creek sounds); heyheymaimai (frogs and cicadas of Tennessee);inchadney (mountain stream); rtb45 (hydroelectric turbines); ivolipa (high voltage)
Special appearance by Franklin D. Roosevelt as himself, radio address on the Democratic Party platform, July 20, 1932, from the Master Speech File of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.
Research covers a lot of ground but for further reading I recommend especially Sarah T. Phillips, This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal (2007). For le Corbusier and Norris Dam, see Mardges Bacon, “Le Corbusier and Postwar America: The TVA and Béton Brut,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (March 2015). Donald Davidson’s history of the Tennessee River, part of the old Rivers of America series, is quite remarkable, if you can stand reading the unreconstructed white southern point of view; the woodcuts of TVA power lines and dams by Theresa Sherrer Davidson are remarkable. J. Saunders Redding’s record of his travel in the South is No Day of Triumph (1942). Ernie Pyle’s columns appear in Scripps-Howard newspapers of the era; I got them from the Pittsburgh Press on newspapers.com.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
