Cheoah Dam is a curved wall of concrete at the bottom of one of the most famous motorcycle roads in the world, and it is also, rather improbably, a film location. In the 1996 movie The Fugitive, Harrison Ford's character leaps from the top of a dam into the water below, and that dam is this one, high above the Cheoah River in the mountains of western North Carolina, close to the Tennessee line. You can see it from the road, and a surprising number of riders stop just to stand where the film crew stood.
The dam was built in 1919, in a hurry and in the middle of nowhere, for the Aluminum Company of America, which needed cheap hydroelectric power to smelt aluminium for the First World War effort and beyond. The company built a whole company community called Tapoco, a name made from the initials of the Tallassee Power Company, and a lodge is still there. The setting is lovely: wooded ridges, the green Little Tennessee River backed up behind the dam, and steep, narrow valleys covered in oak, hickory and rhododendron.
Just a few miles from here is the road that has made this area famous: US 129, US 129 at Deals Gap, which famously packs around three hundred curves into eleven miles between this part of North Carolina and Tennessee. It is a tight, technical, fast road with no side roads and no houses, and it is popular with riders and sports cars alike. Cheoah Dam is a good place to catch your breath before or after it. The nearby Cherohala Skyway, a long, smooth mountain road that climbs from Robbinsville toward Tellico Plains, is a gentler, higher cousin, with views over the Unicoi range.
Services around the dam are limited. Fuel is sold at Robbinsville, about eighteen kilometres away, and at the motorcycle resort in Deals Gap near the start of the Dragon, and food, souvenirs and photographs of your bike on the Dragon are all easy to find there. Riding here demands attention: gravel in the corners, cars drifting over the line and police patrols are all common, and speeding fines are heavy. Be kind to your tyres, keep to your side of the line, and enjoy the quieter pleasure of a hot afternoon beside the water.