It's Flat Top Lake's 75th Birthday!
by guest author, Kate Campbell - thank you so much, Kate!
(click on articles to open a larger version)
Today, April 1 marks the 75th anniversary of Flat Top Lake reaching full pool and becoming a lake! As we celebrate this milestone birthday, we wanted to highlight some of the lake’s early history for members to show how far we’ve come and ask everyone to pause and reflect on WV's best kept secret.The idea for FTL was originally conceived by Dr. Robert W. Chambers, his brother George, John Harvey, and Ted Carney in April 1949 while they were on a fishing trip at Norris Dam in Tennessee. The first plots of land that became the lake were located and purchased later that year, followed by the purchase of additional acreage in 1953 to bring the Association’s holdings up to its current 2200 acres. According to a 1951 article in the Hinton Daily News (pictured), the founders nearly overlooked the site on Huff’s Knob, thinking that the shallow, brush-filled valley had too small of a water supply and that the required dam size would be cost prohibitive. But the founders were swayed by the water quality at the headwaters of Glade Creek, and they were able to offset some of the construction costs through donations of heavy equipment, materials, and labor by Leo Vecellio and five other contractor members.
In 1951, the first group of board members arranged an initial sale of lots, with each lot set at $1000. As is the case with many infrastructure projects, dam construction proved costly with delays caused by the war in Korea, and the board asked members to consider purchasing second lots to help recoup some of the Association’s nearly $200,000 debt. Of 180 members at the time, 144 agreed to take on an additional lot. Lot assignments were made in March of that year via mass drawing, with members purchasing two lots being given the option to select two adjacent or separate parcels depending on their preference.
Once the lots were assigned, the next challenge faced by the Board was facilitating physical access to them. After months of deliberations, the Board decided to construct a perimeter road along the back sides of lots, initially surfacing it with reddog before transitioning to paving with crushed rock from FTL’s own quarry shot with tar and covered with gravel. This road was used for several years until the Association was able to complete asphalt paving around the full perimeter.
While FTL is an increasingly residential community today, in its early years, the lake was a remote fishing and hunting destination. Construction of the West Virginia Turnpike was only completed two years after the first lots were sold, but it would be many years later before it had a Ghent exit. Early visitors to the lake traveled to the area on US 19. According to a 1959 report in the Raleigh Register, it was not uncommon for early FTL lot owners to pitch a tent on their lots to accommodate them during fishing trips, and even amongst those who built homes it was still for most a working man’s lake. The first completed house at FTL was a brownlee log cabin owned by W. M. Bolden of Charleston (pictured).
In addition to fishing and hunting, in the early years, FTL became a new outlet for water sports. In 1958, the Post Herald and Register in Beckley even ran a special article documenting women water skiing at the lake.
As we look back on 75 years of the lake, we conclude this article with our gratitude to FTL’s founders, members, board members, and the five superintendents who have served the lake and supported its progress over the last seven decades. They are Fred Vines, Pat Walker, Gene Kessler, Bob Rogers, and of course John Graham.
Stay tuned for activities celebrating our 75th anniversary later this summer.
Additional research for this article came from the 1990 History of Flat Top Lake created by the FTLA Board of Directors.