The lake that cools a nuclear station and covers a Cherokee capital.
Lake Keowee is an 18,500-acre Duke Power reservoir in the South Carolina foothills, built between 1968 and 1971 by damming the Keowee and Little rivers — the water now cools Duke Energy's Oconee Nuclear Station and covers the submerged Cherokee town of Keowee and Fort Prince George.
Lake Keowee sits in the Blue Ridge foothills near Seneca and Clemson, 18,500 acres and 300 miles of shoreline created when Duke Power's $700 million Keowee-Toxaway project dammed the Keowee and Little rivers between 1968 and 1971. The lake's water cools Duke Energy's three-reactor Oconee Nuclear Station on its western shore, and its depths hold the excavated remains of Keowee — capital of the Lower Cherokee Nation — and the British colonial outpost Fort Prince George, both surveyed by University of South Carolina archaeologists before the flooding. Marina row on Keowee Marina Drive anchors the commercial lake: Keowee Marina, Lake Keowee Boat Rentals, and Keowee Shores Grill & Cantina all sit within a few docks of each other, with Sunset Marina covering the north end near Six Mile and South Cove County Park providing the lake's main free public boat launch. Seneca, the Oconee County seat, covers the grocery run and the hospital.
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