By Douglas C. Purcell
Doug Purcell is Executive Director of the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the co-author of Images of America: Lower Chattahoochee River. For a US Army Corps of Engineers map of the lake with three names, click here.

Interestingly southeast Alabama and southwest Georgia share a water resource known, over time, by at least three names—Walter F. George Lake, Lake Eufaula and Lake Chattahoochee. This U. S. Army Corps of Engineers impoundment was formed following the construction of the Walter F. George Lock and Dam at Fort Gaines, Georgia in 1963. Today the lake covers 45,192 acres, is 85 miles long and has a 640 mile shoreline. In 2007 almost 3.8 million visitors took advantage of this asset for fishing, boating, sailing, skiing and a variety of other uses.

To further complicate the situation, the sprawling impoundment has obscured the western Georgia boundary where the Chattahoochee River intersects with a portion of Alabama’s eastern boundary. That boundary was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in a decision rendered on May 1, 1860 and is defined as the “mean high water mark”, as it existed in 1798, on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River. That was clear enough until the impoundment was created a little more than a hundred years later. As a result of this project, thousands of acres of land in Georgia and Alabama were inundated by the waters which overflowed the banks of the Chattahoochee River. 23,387 of these acres (52%) are in Georgia and 21,805 acres (48%) in Alabama. The U. S. Supreme Court decision made it clear that the Chattahoochee River belonged entirely to the State of Georgia but the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers project “muddied” the waters making the location of this boundary difficult to determine. However, it is important to realize that the lake is an almost equally shared resource between Alabama and Georgia since it covers flooded land in both states.

It’s Lake Eufaula
On June 25, 1963, both Houses of the Alabama Legislature signed off on Act No. 60 (sponsored by Senator Jimmy Clark of Eufaula) which endorsed the name, Lake Eufaula, in honor of the Creek Indians who once lived throughout the Chattahoochee Valley of Alabama and Georgia. Some opponents of this name said that the lake could never be referred to as “Lake Eufaula” because there was another lake by that name in Oklahoma. However, the name of that lake is “Eufaula Lake” which is located at Eufaula, Oklahoma. The lake and city were named for the Eufaula tribe of the Creek Indians who were moved from the area around Eufaula, Alabama to Oklahoma during the infamous Trail of Tears in the mid 1830’s.

It’s Lake Chattahoochee
Not to be outdone, House Resolution 268 was adopted by the Georgia House of Representatives on March 12, 1965 to designate the reservoir as “Lake Chattahoochee”. The synopsis of the resolution reads that “…the State Highway Department of Georgia is hereby requested to place signs in sufficient number along the highway adjacent to this reservoir to properly and adequately designate the reservoir as “Lake Chattahoochee”. It was introduced by Representative McKemie of Clay County. In the early to late 1970’s only one of these “Lake Chattahoochee” signs was in evidence in downtown Fort Gaines.

Sometime after Winston Churchill’s death on January 24, 1965, Congressman Maston O’Neal of Bainbridge, Georgia proposed calling the reservoir “Lake Winston Churchill” in honor of this distinguished British Prime Minister. This proposal was strongly opposed by Alabama lawmakers and it failed to generate the necessary support needed for the name change. Other suggested names have included Lake Alaga (combining an abbreviation for Alabama and Georgia), Lake Screamer (after the Screamer community on the lake in north Henry County, Alabama) and Lake Roanoke (after the Stewart County, Georgia community burned by a contingent of Creek Indians on May 15, 1836).

It’s Walter F. George Lake
On March 28, 1958, Public Law 85-368 was approved by the U.S. Congress which officially named the Fort Gaines Lock and Dam on the Chattahoochee River as Walter F. George Lock and Dam in honor of Senator Walter F. George of Georgia. Thus, the project name for the reservoir became the Walter F. George Lake. Because the States of Alabama and Georgia could never get together on a name for the reservoir, the name used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is Walter F. George Lake—sometimes referred to as Lake Walter F. George, Lake George or the Walter F. George Reservoir.

The Historic Chattahoochee Commission, a state agency of both Georgia and Alabama, refers to the reservoir as Lake Eufaula/George in all of its publications in an effort to avoid controversy. Today, on the Alabama side of the reservoir near Eufaula are signs directing visitors to Lake Eufaula while on the Georgia side signs point water enthusiasts to the Walter F. Georgia Reservoir. However recent Alabama and Georgia highway maps depict the lake as the Walter F. George Reservoir. In the past Alabama highway maps would carry the “Lake Eufaula” designation while Georgia highway maps were consistent in the use of the “Walter F. George Reservoir” name.

So What’s in a Name?
So, what’s in a name? Community pride and economic development opportunities come to mind in this case. And the use of two names for the reservoir is confusing to sportsmen who are not familiar with the area. Will a compromise ever be reached on a name for the impoundment? That is not likely because the “Lake Eufaula” name has been promoted by the local media and Eufaula-Barbour County Chamber of Commerce for the last 45 years. One Eufaula company, Techsonic Industries, refers to its city location as “Lake Eufaula, Alabama” on its packaging for fish finders and other equipment that it sells. Still the lake, by whatever name you call it, is a wonderful resource to be enjoyed by the citizens of both states as well as visitors from other parts of the country.

Georgia has the largest percentage of original Indian place names of any U.S. state. Nowhere is this rich Native American legacy more apparent than in the names of the state’s rivers. Out of the 14 major rivers, the names of 12 are of Indian origin (the other two are Spanish and French). None of the Indian languages (with the exception of Cherokee since the mid-nineteenth century) had a written form. The various individuals who heard the spoken Indian words and attempted to reproduce them in writing, whether Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englishmen or otherwise, did the best they could to record the words phonetically in accordance with the alphabetical usage of their particular language. Many times the person who first heard the names could not read or write and the names had to be related to other persons and recorded. It is easy to see why great dissimilarities in spelling have occurred over the years.

Altamaha
The Altamaha was named for a Yamassee Indian Chief, Alatamaha. Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto first recorded the name in 1540. Read more about the Altamaha River.

Chattahoochee
Chattahoochee is Creek for “flowered stones.” It comes from the words chatto, meaning stone, plus hooche, meaning marked, flowered or with designs like flowers. A Creek settlement, Chattahoochee Old Town, at today’s Franklin transferred its name to the river. The first mention of the “Chattahoochee” by that name occurs in Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins travel log of the Chattahoochee River and the Creek country in the years 1798-1799. Read more about the Chattahoochee River.

Coosa
Coosa was the name of a number of Creek towns throughout northern Georgia and Alabama and was also the name given the Upper Creeks by the Cherokees. The exact meaning is unknown, but it may have come from the Choctaw kusha, meaning cane or canebrake. Read more about the Coosa River.

Flint
The Creek Indian name for the Flint River was Thronateeska, which meant flint-picking-up place. (The properties of flint made it ideal for chipping into arrowheads or spear points. It was highly valued and traded throughout the region.) The name derives from the Creek word ronoto, meaning flint, and hachi, meaning creek stream. Some old maps show the river as Hlonotiskahachi. Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins wrote that the Indian name for the Flint River was Lonatiskahatchee and that the word lonato meant flint; hachee was the Creek word for stream or creek. Read more about the Flint River.

Ochlockonee
Ochlockonee is Hitchiti Indian for “yellow water” from the Hitchiti oki, meaning water, and lanee, meaning yellow. Read more about the Ochlockonee River.

Ocmulgee
Ocmulgee is a Creek word freely translated to mean boiling or bubbling water. It is a combination of the prefix ak, which has location and directional connotations, and mulgis, which means bubbling or boiling. From the Hitchiti tongue, a dialect spoken among the Lower Creeks, it is pronounced as though spelled oak-mull-ghee (the g hard), with the stress on the second syllable. An early name for the Ocmulgee River was Ocheese Creek. The English called inhabitants living along that stream “Ocheese Creek Indians.” Later this was shortened to simply Creek Indians, and many believe that this is the origin of the name “Creek Indians.” Ocheese signifies “bubbling up of water from a spring” and could have originated from Indian Springs at Jackson. Read more about the Ocmulgee River.

Oconee
Oconee Old Town, the name of a Creek settlement, was located a few miles south of present-day Milledgeville. The Indian village gave its name to the Oconee River. The meaning of the word is unknown. Read more about the Oconee River.

Ogeechee
Freely translated to be “River of the Uchees,” the Ogeechee referred to a sub-tribe of the Creek Confederation. The British settlers called the stream “Hogeechee.” Read more about the Ogeechee River.

St. Marys
The name comes from a Spanish mission, Santa Maria de Guadeloupe, located near the river. The mission was founded in 1568 by Pedro Menendez de Avilles, founder of St. Augustine in Florida. Previously, during the French exploration in 1562, Captain Jean Ribault called it the Seine. The Indians called the river Thalthlothlaguphka, a name that translates to rotten fish. Read more about the St. Marys River.

Satilla
French explorer Jean Ribault named the river Riviere Somme, but a Spanish explorer, St. Illa, gave the river his own name, which is the one that stuck. English usage converted St. Illa to Satilla. Read more about the Satilla River.

Savannah
Savannah means “River of the Shawnees,” so named for a remnant of that tribe who lived on the middle waters of the river in early Colonial days. Read more about the Savannah River.

Suwannee
Suwannee comes from the Creek Indian word suwani, meaning echo. Learn more about the Suwannee River.

Tallapoosa
The exact meaning of this Creek Indian word is unknown, but it may have come from the Choctaw word tali, meaning rock, and pushi, meaning crushed or pulverized. Learn more about the Tallapoosa River.

Tennessee
Tennessee was the name of a number of Cherokee towns in present-day Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. The meaning of the word is unknown. Learn more about the Tennessee River.
SOURCES: Indian Heritage of Georgia by Marion R. Hemperley (Garden Club of Georgia, Inc.); How Georgia Got Her Names by Hal E. Brinkley (CSA Printing); Georgia Place Names by Kenneth K. Krakow (Winship Press).