Video: 'FDR Signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act'

(Thursday, May 18, 1933, 3:15 p.m. EDT; part of the New Deal in response to the Great Depression) — U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt today signed into law the Norris-Hill bill, creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, regional planning, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region that had suffered from a lack of infrastructure and poverty during the Great Depression, relative to the rest of the nation.

Created by Congress in 1933 as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, TVA was envisioned both as a power supplier and a regional economic development agency that would work to help modernize the region’s economy and society.

Video: 'Built for the People The Story of TVA'

Later it evolved primarily into an electric utility.

TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.

While owned by the federal government, TVA receives no taxpayer funding and operates similarly to a private for-profit company.

It was the first large regional planning agency of the U.S. federal government and remains the largest.