When Alabama Power Company decided to build a dam in Cherokee County for the purpose of hydroelectric power generation, company engineers soon realized this would not be their standard construction project.

The natural fall of the Coosa River near the planned construction site in Leesburg prevented a conventional layout for the power facility. Design engineers literally had to go back to the drawing board. What they came up with was a design unique to any of the company's existing plants.

Unlike most hydroelectric facilities with a dam and powerhouse located at one site, the meandering flow of the Coosa River in the area near Leesburg would require that Weiss Dam be built in two separate locations: A spillway, or diversion, dam on Cherokee County Road 7 near Alabama Highway 411, and an electricity-generating powerhouse structure located over four miles away on County Road 20. A man-made one mile-long canal would connect the reservoir created by the spillway dam to a 2,000-acre forebay. From the forebay, water would then flow through the powerhouse, spinning the turbines and generating the desired amount of electricity for distribution throughout the state.

Morrison-Knudsen Construction Company, of Boise, Idaho, and Alabama-based Moss Thornton Company, were awarded the contract to build Weiss Dam in June of 1958 (note: Moss-Thornton's specialty was earth-moving. One of their major projects in the years after completing Weiss Dam was the construction of Talladega Superspeedway near Estaboga in 1968. Today, a section of the main straightaway grandstand bears the company's name). An article detailing the massive construction project appeared in the April 1959 issue of Morrison-Knudsen's monthly magazine The Em-Kayan.

Citing Alabama Power Company's need to "double its capacity to keep pace with soaring demand in the broad area of the state that it serves," the article described the massive undertaking in detail.

According to the article, two pairs of earthen dikes totaling over five miles in length make up Weiss Dam. The eastern pair of dikes, 7500 ft. in combined length, include the spillway dam structure.

The large forebay is enclosed by another earthen dike, this one over 19,000 ft. long. The powerhouse was built into this section. These structures combine to shorten the Coosa River by almost 20 miles, and harness its flow to create a 55 ft. head of water.

In all, over 3.6 million cubic yards of earth-fill material went in to the construction of the dikes around the reservoir and forebay. During the creation of the forebay canal, over 2 million cubic yards of dirt and shale were excavated. The concrete used in the construction totaled 140,000 cubic yards.

Kenny Gossett, now retired from his position as business agent for Local 498 in Gadsden, was a 19-year-old apprentice pipe fitter at the spillway dam construction site in 1958. Gossett was one of over 500 workers -- many of them Cherokee County residents -- who helped build Weiss Dam.

Gossett's job was to minimize leaks in the cofferdam enclosure around the spillway dam site, and pump out any water that seeped through.

"A dam is probably the roughest construction project you can work on," said Gossett. "The foreman told us it was going to be rough ... (and) the more it rained, the rougher it got. They'd call you in the middle of the night if they needed you."

While Gossett and his fellow pipe fitters worked around the clock using 250 horsepower gas-powered pumps to keep water out of the cofferdam, other crews were busy pouring the thousands of cubic yards of concrete that eventually formed the spillway dam.

"They poured the concrete five feet at a time," said Gossett. After one level was poured and allowed to dry, the crews used a heavy crane to raise the forms before pouring another five-foot high level of concrete. Gossett explained why this method is used in any massive concrete construction project: "If they poured any more than (five feet) at a time, the concrete would get too hot as it dried," consequently causing imperfections. Gossett added that when the concrete is poured properly, it continues to harden for 100 years.

A few miles away, construction was simultaneously underway on the powerhouse site. Inside the main building, three massive steel stay rings were constructed, each of which would ultimately support a 28,000 kilowatt Allis-Chalmers turbine. A 150-ton overhead crane was permanently built into the structure to lower the turbines into place.

When the dam officially went on-line on June 5, 1961, 84,000 kilowatts of electric power commenced flowing out from Cherokee County across high voltage lines to wherever it was needed throughout the country. Forty years later, the dam that The Em-Kayan said Morrison-Knudsen was building to "contribute to the march of progress in the deep South" is still providing water for Alabama Power's electricity production needs. At the same time, the 52 mile-long lake behind the dam had allowed a small county in rural Alabama to keep its economic head above water.