The award winning Butler Museum tells the story of “the town that wouldn’t drown”. Originally Butler was a thriving community which settlers, including Daniel Boone, settled back in the late 1700’s along the waters of the Watauga River. Growing over the years, the town eventually had a hotel, a lumber yard, a railroad, bus station, a university/college, and a busy town nestled between the mountains and the Watauga River.  But over time, the lumber industry petered out and in the late 1930’s under Roosevelt’s rural electrification program, the Tennessee Valley Authority it was felt that by damming the Watauga River, the water would generate a great deal of electric power for the towns and communities all along the Tennessee river valley.