Lake Santeetlah, North Carolina
Lake Santeetlah is a town in Graham County, North Carolina, United States, northwest of Robbinsville on a peninsula surrounded by Lake Santeetlah—which in turn is largely surrounded by Nantahala National Forest. The town has more than two hundred residences, many of them second homes owned by permanent residents of Florida and Georgia. The town was organized in 1989 as "Santeetlah"; in 1999, it changed its name to "Lake Santeetlah". The full-time population was 67 at the 2000 census and dropped to 45 in 2010. Geography The town of Lake Santeetlah is located in central Graham County on a peninsula on the northern side of Lake Santeetlah, a reservoir on the Cheoah River, a northward-flowing tributary of the Little Tennessee River. U.S. Route 129 passes just north of the town, leading southeast to Robbinsville, the county seat, and northwest to Tapoco at the Little Tennessee River. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town of Lake Santeetlah has a total area of , all land. History Because of its mountainous terrain, Graham County was one of the last sections of the eastern United States to be settled by Europeans. Robbinsville was not incorporated until 1893, and it had only 200 residents in 1915. The area known as "Santeetlah" along the Cheoah River was sparsely settled, and in any case, the river valley was flooded after Santeetlah Dam was completed in 1928. In 1939, the U.S. Forest Service purchased from Carolina Aluminum Company the land now occupied by the town of Lake Santeetlah. The father of Lake Santeetlah was Kenneth S. Keyes, Sr. (1896–1995), a native of Detroit, who became an extremely successful real estate dealer in Miami, heading over fifty corporations that operated hotels, office buildings and other realty enterprises in Florida, New York, and Canada. In 1957 he served as president of the National Association of Realtors. Keyes, an evangelical Christian, was also finance chairman of the National Association of Evangelicals and a founder of the Presbyterian Church in America. In 1947, Keyes exchanged with the Forest Service some land he held for the area that is now the town of Lake Santeetlah. For undetermined reasons he called the property "Thunderbird Estates". Apparently Keyes hoped to build a large hotel complex in the area of the community now known as Chalet Village, and that area was graded in preparation for building. Nevertheless, although he hired a Miami architectural firm to draw the plans, Keyes never built, and in 1958, he sold the undeveloped property to another Florida land developer, who transferred it again in 1961. In the early 1960s, a new corporation, Smoky Mountain Resorts, built a lodge and some cabins, and the first landowners began to build on the north shore of the peninsula. The lodge, with its two faux totem poles, became "the heartbeat of Thunderbird Mountain Resort" with activities that included square dancing, bingo, movies, and church services, as well as a place "to gather together when the mail was delivered." Although roads were graded and