Denver

Denver surrounds Lake Norman, which led Denver to grow in ways that its early boosters probably could have never fathomed. In 1962, Duke Power built the Cowans Ford Dam, flooding the fertile farmland along the Catawba River “bottoms”, the land which had attracted the area’s first settlers. A great weekend and summer “getaway” homes began to appear lakeside from a small ranch to luxurious lake homes. Denver is now largely a bedroom community for Charlotte, which is 25 miles (40 km) to the south.