The Upper French Broad Defense Association collection concerns the activities of local citizens who banded together to fight a Tennessee Valley Authority project to build fourteen dams on the tributaries of the upper French Broad River for flood control. In spite of almost unanimous support from local newspaper and civic groups in favor of the project, UFBDA members at last turned the tide of public opinion against the project until the TVA dropped the project.
In addition to the papers held by D.H. Ramsey Library, the Western Archives and History facility at Oteen, near Asheville, holds a small group of early documents and correspondence.
ORG.131: Upper French Broad Defense Association Records; 4 fibredex boxes.
This collection contains a sampling of the papers collected by the UFBDA, and includes pamphlets, copies of editorials, studies of flood control, articles against clear-cutting, and other items. Also included is a copy of Martha Gash Boswell's Grassroots Along the Upper French Broad: The Valley People Versus the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1961-1972, a 29-page pamphlet recounting the association's struggle to block construction of the dams.
