High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Melton Hill Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Clinch River just south of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. The dam is operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the early 1960s to extend the Tennessee Valley`s continuous navigation channel up the Clinch as far as Clinton and to increase TVA`s overall power-generating capacity. The dam impounds the 5,470-acre (2,210 ha) Melton Hill Lake, and is the only TVA tributary dam serviced by a navigation lock. Melton Hill Dam was named for Melton Hill, a knob atop nearby Copper Ridge where the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey established a triangulation station in 1884.