In this short clip, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the US Department of Energy tell us how the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration treated private property. Don't let the war fool you. FDR and his gang could not care less about private property rights before or during World War II.
Video from the Y-12, A Nuclear Family series is fair use, Title 17, Section 107, United States Code.
Note from the video, and historian D. Ray Smith, that Cades Cove was made a part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and people were moved. What is not mentioned is that Cades Cove was a 1934 big government project to turn a wilderness with a few people living within its boundaries into a big giant happy park, with nobody but federal employees (Parks Service) living within its boundaries. At least they didn't name the place after a politician. It was so darn important to the world, that FDR stopped by to "dedicate" the place in 1940, six years after he had the residents dragged out.
Then FDR had another brilliant idea to build hydroelectric dams all over the countryside. Some were in the Tennessee River Valley, others were in the west. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) evicted families, by force if needed, out of the Clinch river valley that formed the Norris Dam reservoir. Norris Dam is a monument to government named after George W. Norris, a U.S. Senator from Nebraska.
Some of those people who were booted from Cades Cove by FDR and then booted from "Norris" by FDR settled in Bear Creek Valley, and were booted from there by FDR for the Manhattan Project.
