The New Deal created the Tennessee Valley Authority to modernize a vast impoverished region with hydroelectric power dams and, at the same time, to reclaim eroded land and preserve old folkways.

READING THE MAP How many states were affected by the TVA? How many miles of rivers (approximately) were affected?

CONNECTIONS What kinds of benefits — economic as well as social and cultural — did TVA programs bring to the region? How might the lives of a poor farming family in Alabama or Tennessee have changed after the mid-1930s owing to these programs?