LAKE WEDOWEE — Locals call it the backwaters, but there’s nothing backwater about the postcard-perfect houses and manicured lawns on the shores of this manmade lake.A collection of muddy creeks surrounded by farmland 15 years ago, Lake Wedowee has become one of the most desirable waterfront communities in the region, attracting retirees and affluent second-home shoppers willing to pay up to half a million dollars for a prime half-acre lot. The rush to build has boosted area businesses and strengthened the local tax base while subtly altering rural patterns and environmental balances.
Ray Mansfield, head of the area property owners association, explained the lake’s attraction as he skimmed across its glassy surface in his 17-foot bass boat. Mansfield, 62, built a second home here in 1991 as a way to take refuge from his life as a high school principal in Georgia. He and his wife retired and moved to the lake full-time five years ago.
“It was an escape,” he said.
Alabama Power Co. created Lake Wedowee, or Lake Harris, as the utility calls it, with the damming of the Tallapoosa and Little Tallapoosa rivers in 1982. R.L. Harris Dam, the last hydropower project built in the state, transformed a 24-mile stretch of narrow riverways into a 10,660-acre lake, 100 feet deep in areas, with 271 miles of shoreline. Clean, and brimming with crappie, catfish and bass, the lake soon became a favorite of anglers, who spread the word.
While not on a par with land prices at Logan Martin Lake, west of Talladega, and Lake Martin, south of Alexander City, Lake Wedowee real estate has seen its stock rise tremendously in recent years, according to area real estate agents. Buyers, most of whom come from Georgia, can expect to pay between $50,000 and $450,000 for a half-acre lot, depending on the view, the slope and other considerations. An inlet lot with no view and only a little water in winter bottoms the scale; a site on a point, with year-round water and a view that sweeps across wide-open water and woods, tops it.
An average two-bedroom home on the lake goes for about $250,000, according to Gene Crouch, an agent with Hunter Bend Realty. Crouch said he sells most lakefront homes within a week of their listing, and cited a three-bedroom home he recently sold for $318,000 as an example of the high demand.
“It wasn’t anything spectacular,” he said of the house.
Recently, Crouch sold four Lake Wedowee homes the same morning they were listed.
With no new dams planned for the state, lakefront real estate is at a premium. In the last five years especially, Crouch said, people have flocked to Lake Wedowee for its clean water, beautiful rural setting and low property prices compared to other lakefronts in Alabama and Georgia.
Some have bought land purely as an investment, said Fred Hill, a broker with Re/Max. As property values have edged upward and building covenants at the lake’s numerous developments have tightened, Hill said, rustic cabins and trailers have been replaced by sprawling houses with bungalow-size garages.
At the Hunter Woods Estates development, Mansfield’s custom-built two-bedroom house, its wide porch overlooking a carefully landscaped lawn sloping into the lake, is worlds away from some of his neighbors. Less than a mile from the lakefront, the road Mansfield travels into town every day is lined with rusting car parts and crumbling one-story houses roofed in tar paper.
Roads are in rough shape out here, services are minimal and longtime locals can be wary of change, Mansfield said.
Some Lake Wedowee transplants, accustomed to urban amenities and cosmopolitan outlooks, quickly grow frustrated, Mansfield said.
“It drives them crazy,” he said.
The secret to adapting is to get involved in civic activities, meet people, become a part of the community, said Ralph Watkins, one of the lake’s early settlers. Over the year, Watkins said, suspicious glances have turned to friendly smiles.
“Now I’ve been here long enough that I know everyone and they know me,” he said.
Gleason Pool was comfortable here before he ever bought waterfront property. Unlike most Lake Wedowee property owners, Gleason was born and raised in the area. As an adult, he moved to Atlanta where he worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accustomed to city life, Gleason didn’t think he’d ever move back to Wedowee, but word of luxurious living here sparked his interest. In 2000, he built a home on the lake and decided to make it permanent. He relishes the quiet, laid-back atmosphere.
“Down here, it can wait a while,” he said motioning to some weeds in his lawn.
Lake Wedowee residents who overlook the area’s minor discomforts grow to love the rural way of life, Mansfield said.
“We have to adapt to the way it is,” he said.
A close community, neighbors up and down Mansfield’s road helped pay $60,000 to have the dirt road re-surfaced with tar and gravel. When Mansfield forgot his wallet recently, his mechanic told him to just pay whenever he could.
While some unease lingers, relations between lake home owners and longtime locals are fairly smooth, some area residents say. The lake has been an economic boon, pumping up tax revenues, creating demand for local businesses, and attracting fishing aficionados and tourists. Every week, about 4,500 people go to Flat Rock Park, a 25-acre shorefront park on the lake, according to a 2003 study by the East Alabama Planning and Development Commission.
In the 2005 tax year, Lake Wedowee residential properties accounted for $1.3 million of Randolph County’s $5.1 million property-tax revenue. When combined with revenue from Alabama Power-owned land, Lake Wedowee’s shoreline accounts for more than half of the county’s total property-tax revenues.
Wedowee Mayor Tim Coe said he looked at the lake’s popularity as a “novelty” at first but quickly came to see the value of development there. Not only do the mostly retired lake residents pay a heavy tax load, they put no demand on the school system and require little in terms of services, Coe said.
“They’re more givers than takers,” Coe said.
Because most of Lake Wedowee’s houses are second homes, most residents don’t vote locally and have a limited political voice. That could change, Coe said, if property values continue to climb and more home buyers make their primary residences there.
Chicken farmer Jerry Rice has lived near the lake all his life. Although wary of overdevelopment, Rice welcomes his new neighbors. He’s done well by running a boat-storage business and selling off some of his family’s “considerable” lakefront property, which climbed in value from about $500 an acre before the lake to about $500,000 an acre now. It wasn’t long ago, Rice said, that his road had only seven houses along its 2.5-mile stretch. Now there are 150.
“I’m not resentful at all,” Rice said. “I’m happy to see things grow.”
Jack Burnside, owner of Wedowee Landscaping, has shifted his business model because of lake residents. He doesn’t even bother with out-of-county work now, preferring instead to focus his energies on the manicured lawns around the lake. In 15 years, Burnside said, his lake business has gone from about 10 percent of his total to about 60 percent.
Like Rice, Burnside doesn’t want to see development get out of hand, doesn’t want to see traffic congestion and strip malls.
“Some (lake residents) of course want their cell phone to have five bars every time and they want a Red Lobster on every corner,” he said.
The area is far from losing its rural values though, Burnside said. The change so far has been good, he said, bringing intelligent, accomplished people to the community and its churches.
Rapid shoreline development has also had a downside.
While the lake is in good shape compared with others in the region, it has seen an increase in phosphorous levels, which threaten to bring algae blooms and fish kills, according to environmental regulators and activists.
“It’s a relatively clean lake, but like any lake in the state it’s got potential for some problems down the road just because of the urbanization effect,” said Chris Johnson, an environmental engineer at the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
As the first lake in the Tallapoosa basin’s system of lakes, Wedowee acts as a kind of filter, holding much of the chemical runoff from lawn fertilizers, malfunctioning septic tanks and chicken farm waste, according to Bill Deutsch, program manager at Alabama Water Watch, a volunteer program associated with Auburn University. The lake has undergone “dramatic changes” since an ADEM study named it the cleanest in Alabama, Deutsch said, going from a low level of nutrients such as phosphorous to a high level.
Residents’ awareness can help, Deutsch said.
“The more people want to have those emerald-green lawns, the better the chances of those nutrients entering the water,” he said.
As lake residents grow more familiar and attached to their surroundings, they will want to learn more about the ecological balance and how they can protect it, said Sheila Smith, a regional coordinator for Alabama Power who lives on the lake.
“Gradually, it becomes ‘our lake,’” Smith said.
Alabama Power owns about 65 percent of the land surrounding the lake, and, as mandated by its operating license, must clear any development plans with federal regulators.
If either the utility or several other large land owners decided to sell to developers, the lakefront’s appearance could change in dramatic ways.
Alabama Power has contracted with Hunter Bend Realty to sell 25 newly cleared lots sometime this summer, according to Crouch. Sometime before then, Hunter Bend will put the finishing touches on 20 new homes at its 215-home subdivision on the lake’s southern end, Crouch said.
Surveying the skeletons of under-construction houses from his boat, Mansfield said he understands perfectly the lake’s pull. As two blue herons floated overhead, Mansfield said he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, and he sympathizes with those hungry for a piece of what he calls paradise.
“Any place you can find a place to build, you put up a house,” he said.
