Lake Tillery

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Lake Tillery
Location	North Carolina
Primary inflows	Pee Dee River
Primary outflows	Pee Dee River
Basin countries	United States

Lake Tillery is the man-made lake (or reservoir) between Badin Lake and Blewitt Falls Lake in the Uwharrie Lakes Region of North Carolina. It is located entirely within Stanly County and Montgomery County, NC. The lake was created by the daming of the Pee Dee River which is newly formed by the junction of the Yadkin River with the Uwharrie River several miles to the north. Norwood, NC in neighboring Stanly County uses as its town motto "Gateway to Lake Tillery".

[edit] Lake Tillery Bridge

The Lake Tillery Bridge the only crossing of the Pee-Dee-Yadkin River between Badin Lake and Norwood. The bridge carries traffic on North Carolina Highway 24/27/73 across the river and Lake Tillery from Stanly County to Montgomery County. Swift Island Bridge, the water's old crossing parallels the newer four-lane bridge which accompanies it; the older bridge 1s a narrow two-lane concrete arch bridge built in 1922.

In the 1920s when it was discovered that the 5,000-acre (20 km²) lake to be impounded behind the Norwood dam would cover the original reinforced concrete and steel bridge, Carolina Power & Light Company (now Progress Energy Inc), owner of the new dam, turned it over to the U.S. military for training purposes.

First, engineers were unable to break the bridge by loading it with enough weight to break it. Next, the Air Force dropped bombs on it. Later, an artillery division shot at it.

It finally took a ton of TNT to bring the bridge down. An clearly embarrassed U.S. War Department saved face by saying that it had obtained "valuable military data" from the experience.