Taken and Delivered - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 139

Furthermore, at the time of the Chattooga's full wild and scenic river designation in 1974,
parcels of South Carolina's public land near the river—such as Ellicott's Rock and more
than 37,000 acres in the Chauga watershed—were under consideration for wilderness and
roadless designations. In both cases these federal designations would have eliminated log-
ging and forestry jobs in those specific areas, a point articulated by local wilderness oppon-
ents as early as 1971. 75 Against this backdrop, Rabun County (Ga.) and Oconee County
(S.C.) communities thought they were besieged by the federal government's reach into the
mountain landscape. In response to these encroachments, residents on both sides of the
Chattooga River began to vent their frustrations over increasingly restrictive land manage-
ment policy that dated back to the Weeks Act (1911), when the Forest Service began ac-
quiring property in the southern Appalachians, but that now centered on the Chattooga's
1974 designation as a wild and scenic river.
No other issue sparked greater confrontation in the Chattooga region than the Forest Ser-
vice's October 1974 decision to close roads that crossed Forest Service land and entered the
Chattooga's new wild and scenic river corridor. 76 Under the terms of the Wild and Scenic
River Act (1968), river sections designated as “wild” were supposed to be “generally inac-
cessible except by trail .” Scenic and recreational sections could be “ accessible in places by
roads .” 77 The Chattooga's wild and scenic corridor—or the distance between the riverbank
and the corridor boundary—was rarely more than one-quarter mile wide, and the corridor
itself was generally surrounded by thousands of acres of Forest Service land. Chattooga
River study personnel intent on meeting the designation standards first introduced the idea
to close corridor roads and selected foot trails in 1969 and immediately encountered resist-
ance from state fish and game managers who were concerned about how they would reach
the river to restock fish or check hunting licenses. And in 1971 the Forest Service proposed
closing up to thirty miles of roads. 78 Despite the expressed concerns, Oconee County (S.C.)
commissioners eventually transferred all the required road rights-of-way to the Forest Ser-
vice prior to 1974, but their Rabun County (Ga.) counterparts did not. As early as 1972 the
Rabun County commissioners had begun to hear arguments from both the Forest Service's
Max Gates and county residents on the issue of future road closures. 79 By October 1974,
Chattahoochee National Forest (Ga.) supervisor William Patrick Thomas facilitated a local-
ized and back-channel road-closure agreement between Rabun County commissioners and
Chattooga's wild and scenic river managers. Georgia senator Herman Talmadge, chairman
of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry who was embarking on his fourth
and last term (1956-80), helped Thomas and Rabun County commissioners broker a deal
that closed some state and country roads while keeping others open in spite of the Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act's requirements. 80 Plus, the Forest Service maintained three bridge cross-
ings—including one U.S. highway, one state road, and one Forest Service road—within