Carroll County Chronicles Fall 2020

Johnstown, PA dam in 1889 killed over 2000 people and the St. Francis dam in California in 1928 killed over 400.

The question we are left with is; did the Skaggs brothers perpetrate a scam on the town of Hillsville and its citizens or was it just an overly ambitious attempt to achieve success in life. Most of the known facts tend to point to the latter. There is no evidence that the Skaggs brothers were ever located and made to answer for their errors. Most people in the county believed the whole thing was a scam and joked about it for years.

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Resurrection of the Site

For ten years, the dam and its surrounding property sat unused. In the early thirties, the idea was raised of using the site for a recreation area. In 1936, the idea went public. Even though the country was in the middle of the Great Depression, the idea caught on and the state and federal governments supported the idea and appropriated money for the construction with the caveat that the county raise part of the cost themselves.

Hundreds of local citizens donated what little money they could toward the project and it was completed in less than 9 months from the start of construction.

Construction began February 1 st , 1939 and on October 21 st , 1939, the camp was opened with a host of dignitaries, both local and national present. The ceremony lasted four-and-a-half hours.

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