"Except for christening a few such projects with the names of U.S. presidents, dams are customarily titled after the closest municipality. This, however, did not turn out to be the case with the dam and lake in question. What was dedicated on the spot by President Lyndon Johnson on September 3, 1966 as "Summersville Lake and Dam," did not comply with the usual procedure of labeling such structures... I have imagined being a fly on the wall when officials of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers met to discuss the naming of the big dam in Nicholas County because a rather serious back and forth erupted in the discussion of the proper naming of the dam. A few members of the brain-trust took the side of the small community closest to the project rather than favoring Summersville, the larger more prestigious county seat nearby. Since the byways and buildings of the little hamlet would end up being permanently immersed at the bottom of the lake, it would be most fitting to honor the doomed community by naming the lake and dam after it. The committee's pro-Summersville majority won the final decision largely on the strength of a public relations argument that would protect the future tourist and recreation site from being giggled at by some and abused by ridicule from others. It would also avoid predictable jibs and jeering in the media. The community closest to the project, you see, was the unincorporated town of Gad. Today, there exists only in imaginative speculation what might have resulted if the widely known magnificent structure had been named "Gad Dam"."