The Town of Lake Santeetlah is one of the smallest incorporated towns in North Carolina: 38 full-time residents in the 2020 census, spread across more than 200 houses on a wooded peninsula on the lake's north shore. It has a town hall, a volunteer fire department, its own water system, and almost no commerce. For most of the year it is very quiet. In summer, when the second-home owners arrive, it wakes up.
The town covers about a fifth of a square mile, six miles northwest of Robbinsville off US-129. Its history is unusual: it spent decades as a Florida developer's resort colony, passed through the hands of two insurance companies and, briefly, the State of Indiana, before the homeowners gave up on landlords and incorporated a town.
Thunderbird Mountain
The lake came first, in 1928, when Alcoa dammed the Cheoah River. The peninsula where the town now sits stayed undeveloped. In 1939 the U.S. Forest Service bought the land from the Carolina Aluminum Company. In 1947, Miami real estate developer Kenneth S. Keyes, Sr. swapped other land for the peninsula, named it Thunderbird Estates, and had the site of a large hotel graded. The hotel was never built. Keyes sold the undeveloped property in 1958, and it changed hands again in 1961.
In the early 1960s, Smoky Mountain Resorts finally built something: a lodge, cabins, graded roads, and a water system. The lodge, decorated with two fake totem poles, was the social center of what was now called Thunderbird Mountain Resort, hosting square dances, bingo, movies, church services, and the daily gathering when the mail came in. The first cottages were simple. The development was, in the town history's words, "always short of capital."
The insurance company years
Smoky Mountain Resorts sold out in 1971 to W. Bennett Collette, who shuffled the property among his companies and made clear he had no interest in running the water system. The homeowners association, formed in 1969, looked at taking the system over itself. Then, in 1979, the Insurance Commissioner of Indiana seized the assets of Collette's failed Pilgrim Life Insurance Company, and the State of Indiana briefly owned a mountain resort in North Carolina. Indiana sold to Executive National Life Insurance in 1981.
Relations between the insurance company and the property owners were, by all accounts, poor. The company did not maintain the water system as the covenants required, owners stopped paying fees, some residents dug their own wells, and the state had already banned new connections to the failing system in 1979. A lawsuit by the company was dismissed, and the company became more open to the obvious solution: let the homeowners run the place themselves.
Incorporation
On April 13, 1989, Thunderbird Mountain became the Town of Santeetlah. In 1991, Executive National transferred the roads and the water system to the town. Using state grants and assessments on the properties, the town built a new water system, finished in 1995, and repaved the roads. A volunteer fire department and community center went up in 1991, and the town hall was dedicated on the Fourth of July, 1998. In 1999 the town changed its name to Lake Santeetlah, matching the lake it sits on.
The new water system changed the housing. The modest cottages of the 1960s were joined by much larger houses in the 1990s and 2000s, the old lodge ended its days as a sales office for an upscale lakefront development, and million-dollar property transfers happened for the first time.
The town today
Most of the 200-plus houses are second homes, many owned by families from Florida and Georgia, and the year-round population has drifted down from 67 in the 2000 census to 38 in 2020. The town still runs the roads and water system its residents fought to control. Santeetlah Marina serves the lake from the town's shore. At the top end of the market, houses like 4 Lakeside Trail, with 100 feet of shoreline and a private dock, show what the peninsula's housing stock became after 1995.
A useful distinction for visitors: the town is one small community on the north shore. The lake itself is 2,881 acres, and about 80 percent of its shoreline is Nantahala National Forest, which is why a town of 38 people sits on a lake that feels mostly empty. For the lake's geography and history, see Lake Santeetlah basics and how the lake was made.
Keep reading
- Boating on Lake Santeetlah: Santeetlah Marina, Public Ramps, and Boat-In Campsites
- Stecoah Valley Center: Bluegrass in a 1926 Rock Schoolhouse, and Eating Local in Graham County
Common questions
How many people live in the Town of Lake Santeetlah?
38 full-time residents, as of the 2020 census. The town has more than 200 houses, but most are second homes, so the summer population is much larger than the census count.
When was the town incorporated?
April 13, 1989, as the Town of Santeetlah, out of the Thunderbird Mountain resort community. It took over its roads and water system in 1991 and renamed itself Lake Santeetlah in 1999.
Is the town the same as the lake?
No. The town is an incorporated community of about 0.19 square miles on a peninsula on the lake's north shore. Lake Santeetlah itself covers 2,881 acres, and most of its 76 miles of shoreline is national forest land.