by Joyce Deaton
We hop into the wide-beamed Sweetwater pontoon at the end of the dock at Tega Cay Marina and ease out into the main channel. Darrin Coley, manager of the marina, has provided us with the Sweetwater, one of a small fleet he rents by the hour for lakegoers looking for a day on Lake Wylie’s waters.
We’re off to explore the surrounding area – an interesting spot on the lake where several small creeks empty into the main channel, providing some interesting byways for leisurely cruising. Three marinas, Tega Cay, the Lake Club and Commodore Yacht Club, almost within sight of each other, make good destinations, too. About five miles south of bustling Buster Boyd Bridge, it’s also a little less crowded. This weekday morning the water is clear and green, with few other boaters around. Overhead, a warm sun is burning off the morning haze, on its way to a day that’s good and hot for mid-May.
Heading out across the lake to the Rock Hill side, we pass tiny Goat Island, a favorite fishing and picnicking spot among the locals. This morning the picnic table is resting under the trees and only the birds are in charge. Atop the tallest pine tree we spot…a bald eagle? Yes, we’re sure of it until he stretches out the long, graceful neck of an egret. From his lofty perch, he’s unworried by our presence a hundred yards or so away.
South of the island we see the long, sandy beach of Rock Hill’s Ebenezer Park, where families can swim, fish and picnic for the day or camp in one of 69 sites throughout the park. Today, a few dozen RVs indicate it’s a favorite spot for campers. (You can even stay for weeks, with a short break now and then.) Three public boat ramps offer easy access to the lake, and a playground and basketball court provide amusements for landlubbers. With large picnic shelters for groups, the park is one of Rock Hill’s most popular assets.
Heading west just north of the park, we spot the yellow clubhouse of the Lake Club Marina, where boaters can find a gas dock and small ship’s store with groceries, along with 118 slips, restrooms and a boat ramp.
Farther west, we meander down Little Allison, then Big Allison Creek, where steep hills run down to the water in completely built-up lakefront neighborhoods. Large houses with ample boat houses abound, along with a few more modest homes from the ’70s and ’80s and one or two of the old frame cabins that dotted the shore when the lake was known as “the river” and a generation of Carolinians spent summer weekends in its often-muddy waters. Among the splendor of the stucco and stone mini-mansions, these simple structures quietly hold their memories, almost unnoticed. They bespeak Lake Wylie’s true heritage and invite a look into its interesting history.
That history starts with Dr. Walker Gill Wylie, who grew up near the Catawba River in Chester, S.C. around the time of the Civil War. According to a Charlotte Observer article by Dr. Tom Hanchett, historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, Gill Wylie volunteered as a Confederate soldier at 16. When the war was over, he attended medical school and became a well-known physician in New York City. By the 1890s, the newfangled phenomenon of electricity was the talk of the town. In nearby New Jersey, Thomas Edison had invented the light bulb, and upstate in Niagara Falls, huge dams were being built to generate electricity through waterpower.
Wylie became fascinated with the potential of the Carolina Piedmont’s rocky rivers, full of natural falls and shoals, said Hanchett. With friends back home, he financed the 1895 construction of a dam on the Rock River near Anderson, S.C. Soon the city had street lamps downtown and began calling itself “The Electric City.”
In 1900, Wylie and his brother, Robert, chartered the Catawba Power Company to make even more investments. They hired William States Lee, an engineer on the Anderson dam, and began building a dam on the Catawba River at India Hook Shoals near Rock Hill. As it became increasingly obvious that a power company was by nature capital-intensive, Wylie realized he had just the right connection. James Buchanan “Buck” Duke, head of the American Tobacco Company, had become one of the world’s wealthiest men as his company became the first to mass-produce cigarettes. Born near Durham and then living in New Jersey, he was a patient of Dr. Wylie, and he was suffering from an inflamed foot. Wylie visited him to talk about not only his foot, but the promising future of his fledgling business, by then called the Southern Power Company. Duke brought his millions to the business, which soon began building dams and providing power all along the Catawba. By 1935 the company changed its name to Duke Power, and today Duke Energy is one of the world’s largest utility operations.
But back to Lake Wylie. In 1924, the Southern Power Company rebuilt and raised the level of the original dam at India Hook, more than doubling the lake’s surface from to approximately 13,443 acres and 325 miles of shoreline. In 1960, the dam, the power station and the lake, originally known as Lake Catawba, were renamed to honor Wylie, the visionary physician who created it more than a century ago.
In the early days, Duke Power leased the lakeshore land to local residents. Though they often held virtually lifelong leases, these early lakegoers seldom built permanent homes because they didn’t own the land. Instead, the typical lake dwelling was a fairly primitive river cabin, rough and practical – more of a camp than a house.
Talk to many a resident of Charlotte or Rock Hill today, and you’ll hear stories of their childhood adventures in the early Lake Wylie cabins. Goody and Zach Thomas, who with their brother Danny grew up in Charlotte, reminisced recently about their days at their grandparents’ “river house” on a point about a mile south of the Buster Boyd Bridge in the 1950s. Their grandfather was called Daddy Too, thus named when the grandchildren pondered the mystery of his being a “granddaddy and a daddy, too.” Daddy Too loved having all his grandchildren visit the river, and summer gatherings were frequent.
“We’d ride on a dirt road for about a mile, then turn into the woods,” Goody recalled. “After driving a ways through the woods, we’d have to stop and get out to open a gate that had a cowbell on it. Anyone in the house would hear the bell and know someone was coming.” Sometimes the boys were allowed to make the last part of the trip on the outside of the car, leaning back onto the hood or the sloping rear trunk in the hot sun, said Zach.
Goody remembers a big room filled with cots. “When the cousins were all visiting, we slept together in that room, and I also remember the old outhouse in the woods,” he said. Most days, the Thomas cousins would hunt arrowheads in the woods and on a spot they called Arrowhead Island, where they could walk in shoulder-high water when the lake was low. “We always found lots of arrowheads,” said Goody. “Later I wondered if Daddy Too might have laced the woods with them.” After he learned to handle a motorboat at summer camp, Goody was allowed to drive the family’s outboard. “The first time I took it out I made a mistake bringing it in to the dock, smashed the back end and almost sank it right there,” he said. “When the boat was repaired, it was about a foot shorter. My dad said it had had a hemorrhoidectomy.”
When Duke Power began selling the lake lots in the 1970s, tenants had the first right to purchase. Many did, while others decided against a permanent investment. Gradually development along the lakefront changed from rustic cabins to modest brick and frame ranches, then to the elaborate mini-mansions we cruise by today.
From the hilly coves of these westward creeks, we travel upriver to the low-slung red roofs of the Commodore Yacht Club, a small and friendly marina with 73 slips, a ramp, restrooms, showers and a pumpout station. From its beginnings as a private club, Commodore has enjoyed a cozy atmosphere and a clientele that thinks of the place as a second home. Four top-notch houseboats hold permanent residents, and the shores include a play area for children and a fire circle loosely surrounded by periwinkle blue retro metal yard chairs. A large sun deck has tables for dining, and inside the clubhouse there’s a bright and comfortable TV room, large dining area and kitchen. The Commodore’s docks are extra-wide, and between each four slips there’s a space for a dining table and chairs, where many a convivial lunch or end-of-the-day party extends the fun of boating. Today, at midmorning, there’s only a thoughtful blue heron guarding the end of the central dock.
Back on the water, we head across the main channel to Torrence Creek. At the tip of the peninsula formed by the creek, we pass Windjammer Park, a public park of the town of Tega Cay. It’s a lovely spot with long views of the lake from all sides of the point, plenty of picnic tables and an ample beach for swimming. With its westward aspect, it’s known as a great place for enjoying the sunset over Lake Wylie’s waters.
Everywhere, you’re struck by Lake Wylie’s friendly, easygoing demeanor. Passing boaters always wave, fishermen report on what they have or haven’t caught that day, and almost every sandy point extending into the lake has a well-loved picnic table tucked under a tree waiting for its next gathering.
Torrence Creek’s steep hillsides are densely populated with homes ranging from waterside condos to mansions, and atop the metal roof of a recent-vintage boathouse an egret sits so still he looks like an ornament. He finally turns his head, yet never moves his feet. How can he cling to the hot metal? He won’t say.
Turning around and motoring back into the main channel, we head southward back to Tega Cay. More large, elaborate homes dot the shoreline – dream homes, no doubt, of their owners, with turrets and towers and even a sweeping Oriental roofline. Handsome edifices, a far cry from Lake Wylie’s early days and a testament to the real estate boom that ensued.
We idle down and slip into Tega Cay Marina and discover how large the place is. With 210 slips, most of its structure lies in the cove, hardly visible from water or land. The rustic little building housing its small office and ship’s store is deceiving. You can find virtually anything a boater needs here: fuel, a complete repair facility for engine, hull and bottom, a pumpout boat with 24/7 free public access, a boat ramp, restrooms and groceries. Even a pontoon boat, like ours, to rent.
We pull up to the fuel dock, tie off and turn the quiet, comfortable little Sweetwater over to Ted Lemmond, a licensed captain who works with Darrin Coley and also runs a marine repair and transport business. He’s glad to hear we enjoyed the boat. We head up the hill to the car that will carry us back to the workaday world. It’s been a good morning on Lake Wylie.