Wheeler Reservoir is located in northern Alabama. It is named for Joseph Wheeler, a general in the army of the Confederacy, leader of U.S. volunteers in the Spanish-American War, and a U.S. congressman. Wheeler Dam began in 1933 and was completed in 1936.
Wheeler is one of nine reservoirs that create a stairway of navigable water on the Tennessee River from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Paducah, Kentucky. Wheeler helped cover the Muscle Shoals, the rock formations that ad blocked navigation on the Tennessee River. Today, Wheeler Reservoir is a major recreation and tourist center, attracting about four million visits a year. Along with camping, boating, and fishing, visitors enjoy the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, which features the wintering Canada geese. Barge traffic on Wheeler had made it one of the major centers along the Tennessee waterway for shoreline industrial development. Wheeler has two locks, that lift and lower barges as much as 52 ft between reservoirs.
