Cordry Sweetwater Community
~ Story and photo by Jeff Tryon
It seems like a place set apart, psychically separated from the rest of Brown County, as if by mutual consent.
If it were an incorporated town, it would be the largest one in the county by a thousand people, but it’ s like a secret city, somehow different from the county to which it technically belongs.
The Cordry-Sweetwater Conservancy District is a 2,300- acre subdivision built around a pair of private lakes in the extreme northeastern corner of Brown County.
An estimated 1,100 people live there( Nashville has about 800 residents) on lots adjoining Cordry and Sweetwater Lakes, 240 and
320 acres respectively, and ranging to 150 feet deep.
The main entrance is off of Sweetwater Trail. Once inside, the serpentine nature of the shorehugging roller coaster roads and the fact that there are two more or less similar lakes side by side can often be confusing and disorienting for a first time visitor.
“ Never go in there without a map,” a news reporter once told me.
The Conservancy District was the grand vision of developer Howard Prince, who had created Prince’ s Lakes, just across the Johnson County line, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. That successful development incorporated as a town in 1956.
In 1948, Prince and associates began a new development in Hamblen Township around the existing Cordry Lake and eventually creating an adjoining lake in the nearby Sweetwater Valley.
Mr. Prince began buying up land in Brown County, which at that time and place was not exactly at a premium. He is reported to have purchased one 60-acre parcel in what is now Sweetwater Lake for $ 3,600, or just $ 60 an acre!
The original plan for Cordry and Sweetwater Lakes as a recreational and resort housing development was heavily promoted by the Brown County Lakes Development Corporation.
In 1952, work on the new Cordry Lake dam began and buyers began snapping up lots advertised for just $ 12 per lakefront foot, available on contract with monthly payments.
Work was started on the dam for Sweetwater Lake in spring of 1955 and lots began to be sold.
62 Our Brown County • Nov./ Dec. 2014