Lake Strom Thurmond Guide

Until 1988, it was called Clarks Hill Lake, after the nearby South Carolina town of Clarks Hill, and the Revolutionary War hero Elijah Clarke, whose burial place, on the grounds of Georgia's Elijah Clark State Park, is on the western shore of the lake. In 1987, however, Representative Butler Derrick of South Carolina introduced a bill before Congress to rename the lake after Strom Thurmond, the long-time Senator from South Carolina.

The bill passed through Congress with little fanfare or notice, and local Georgia residents were quite surprised the next year when they discovered that the lake had been renamed after a politician from another state. In response, a group of Georgia legislators, led by Representative Doug Barnard, Jr. (who was, ironically, the only Georgia co-sponsor of the original 1987 bill) introduced a bill to rename the lake as "Clarks Hill" once again. That bill, however, was unsuccessful, and the name remained unchanged.

To this day, many residents of Georgia, including most of those who live nearby, refer to the lake by its original name as do some residents of South Carolina. Another noteworthy point is that lake Russell, the lake north of Clarke Hill, was named after Richard B. Russell, Jr., Georgia's noted U.S. Senator and former governor, in the same 1987 bill. South Carolina was quoted as saying, "we don't really care what you call the lake."