Why Is There an Old Grain Elevator in the Middle of Kentucky Lake?

I won't pretend to know, well, much of anything about grain processing facilities, but, if I'm a guessing man, I'd believe they work better on land with water nearby. Since I live here, Owensboro Grain leaps immediately to mind.

The Old Danville Grain Elevator

But we're not here to discuss best practices when planning where to build your grain processing plant. We're here to wonder and to eventually know the answer to why there is a grain elevator in the middle of Kentucky Lake on the Tennessee side. To begin with, if I was standing on the lakeshore, I might have to be told that was what that is. And what it is is the Old Danville Grain Elevator, a historical site in Stewart TN.

If you're next question understandably is, "Why is there a grain elevator standing in the middle of a lake?" then you should know that that current predicament was not the intention. Danville TN sprung to life in the 1860s after the creation of the L&N Railroad and, by 1937, had grown to include a hotel and a post office even though its population never exceeded 200.

Here, get the kind of view of the elevator only birds can get.(And don't skip ahead or you'll miss some cool old images of the elevator when it was active back in the 1930s.)

A Town Beneath Kentucky Lake

I mentioned the year 1937 because that was essentially the beginning of the end for Danville. The Tennessee Valley Authority began surveying the area that year as part of its plan to create Kentucky Lake. The town was vacated and the region was flooded. That's why there are hidden discoveries beneath the lake's waters. There's an old railroad down there alongside the bottom half of the elevator.

I've done a search to see what, if anything, professional scuba divers have found at the bottom of Kentucky Lake, but I came up empty-handed when it comes to the lost city of Danville.