Watauga Lake (Tenn.)

The Butler Project Collection consists of a carousel of 101 35mm slides, a 60-minute audio cassette narration, and narration notes and slide cues. The program concerns the 1983 draw down of Watauga Lake and the reminiscences of individuals who remember Butler (Old Butler), Tenn., before the Tennessee Valley Authority lake covered the town in 1948.

Ridley Wills began collecting Tennessee postcards in the 1930s, eventually amassing some 30,000 postcards. In 2015, he began distributing them to regional institutions. The cards in this collection represent landmarks in East Tennessee, especially in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and in Carter, Greene, Johnson, Sullivan, Washington and Unicoi Counties. There are images of schools, churches, hotels, towns, railroads, scenery and more.