Anderson County officials recently took to social media to clear up an important question during Shark Week.

There are no sharks in Lake Hartwell.

That should have settled the matter.

Instead, it created an entirely new question.

Why did anyone need to tell us there aren’t sharks in Lake Hartwell?

We weren’t particularly concerned about sharks before. Now we have questions.

So we decided to investigate.

First, the Official Story

Lake Hartwell is a freshwater reservoir along the South Carolina and Georgia border. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it covers nearly 56,000 acres and has an incredible 962 miles of shoreline.

It is also deep.

The water near Hartwell Dam reaches approximately 180 feet.

That’s a lot of water to search before confidently declaring that absolutely nothing with a dorsal fin is hiding down there.

Nevertheless, we should make one thing clear.

There is no credible evidence that sharks currently live in Lake Hartwell.

That’s the boring answer.

Now let’s get to the fun part.

Exhibit A: Bull Sharks Don’t Follow the Rules

If we’re going to invent a Lake Hartwell shark conspiracy, we at least need the correct shark.

Meet the bull shark.

Unlike most sharks, bull sharks can tolerate freshwater. They routinely enter rivers and have been documented traveling remarkable distances inland.

That makes the Savannah River interesting.

The Savannah eventually empties into the Atlantic Ocean near Savannah. Lake Hartwell sits much farther upstream in the same river system.

Today, there are some rather obvious obstacles standing between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Hartwell.

They’re called dams.

A bull shark cannot simply leave the Atlantic, point itself toward Anderson and arrive at Green Pond Landing a few days later.

But that wasn’t always the case.

What About Before the Dams?

This is where our ridiculous shark investigation becomes a legitimate historical question.

Before the major dams of the Savannah River system were built, the river was considerably more open to migrating fish.

Augusta was historically considered the head of navigation on the Savannah River. Bull sharks entering the Savannah from the Atlantic theoretically could have traveled far upriver.

We searched for old reports of bull sharks actually being caught around Augusta.

So far, we haven’t found convincing historical proof.

There are stories.

There are people who swear they’ve heard about sharks being caught around Augusta decades ago. Even today, occasional reports of mysterious fins in the Savannah River generate the inevitable question: Could that have been a bull shark?

But a story isn’t the same thing as a documented catch.

We couldn’t find an old photograph, museum specimen, or reliable newspaper account proving that a bull shark reached Augusta.

That doesn’t prove one never did.

It just means the evidence hasn’t surfaced.

Yet.

Could a Shark Have Reached Hartwell Before the Lake Existed?

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Before Lake Hartwell existed, the Savannah, Tugaloo, and Seneca rivers flowed through the area.

Hartwell Dam construction began in the 1950s. The reservoir began filling in February 1961 and reached full pool in March 1962.

Entire stretches of the old river system disappeared beneath the new lake.

Roads were relocated. Bridges disappeared. Farms and old homeplaces vanished beneath the rising water.

Which raises the obvious question nobody at the Army Corps of Engineers seems particularly interested in answering:

What happened to the sharks?

Admittedly, there’s one minor problem with this theory.

We don’t have any evidence there were sharks here.

There’s also a much bigger problem.

By the time Hartwell began filling, other dams farther downstream had already created barriers between the upper Savannah and the Atlantic.

So our hypothetical Lake Hartwell sharks couldn’t simply have followed the rising water into the new reservoir in 1961.

They would have needed to already be here.

For quite a while.

This is admittedly damaging to our investigation.

We choose to continue.

The Lake Hartwell Nessie Theory

Let’s suppose for a moment that sometime before the Savannah River was dammed, an unusually adventurous bull shark made an incredible journey upstream.

Then another arrived.

Maybe they found each other.

Maybe they liked Anderson County.

Maybe nobody told them they were supposed to leave.

Then the dams came.

The sharks were trapped.

Generations passed.

They adapted to freshwater life, survived on fish, and learned that their continued existence depended entirely upon avoiding bass fishermen, sonar, and South Carolina Department of Natural Resources employees.

Today their descendants patrol the deepest portions of Lake Hartwell.

That’s our theory.

There are several scientific problems with it.

Actually, there are a tremendous number of scientific problems with it.

But Lake Hartwell contains nearly 56,000 acres of water.

Have they checked all of it?

We didn’t think so.

Then There Are the Alligators

Here’s where laughing at strange Lake Hartwell wildlife stories becomes slightly more difficult.

Alligators aren’t supposed to have an established population in the Upstate either.

Yet they occasionally appear.

A local report from 2018 recalled a seven-foot alligator found in Lake Hartwell in 2007.

That doesn’t mean Hartwell has a hidden population of alligators. Wildlife officials have explained that alligators appearing this far north may have been illegally moved or released.

There have also been some spectacular false alarms.

In 2018, people reported what looked remarkably like an alligator near Portman Marina.

It was an alligator.

Unfortunately, it was a fake one.

Someone had apparently placed a realistic floating alligator decoy in the lake.

Then another supposed Hartwell gator made the rounds on social media in 2022. That one was investigated by SCDNR and determined to be a hoax.

So the official Hartwell alligator count appears to consist of at least one real gator and a surprisingly healthy population of fake ones.

Still, that 2007 animal is important.

Because every good conspiracy theory needs one moment when everyone laughs and then somebody says:

“Well, actually…”

What About Lake Keowee and Lake Jocassee?

The farther into the mountains we travel, the shakier our aquatic-monster case becomes.

Lake Keowee and especially Lake Jocassee are not normal alligator habitat. Jocassee’s deep mountain water is certainly not where anyone should expect to encounter one.

We also couldn’t find credible evidence of sharks living in either lake.

Of course, that’s exactly what the Lake Jocassee sharks want us to believe.

So Are There Sharks in Lake Hartwell?

Almost certainly not.

There has never been a verified modern shark sighting in Lake Hartwell that we could find. There is no known shark population in the lake. The dams downstream make a modern bull shark journey from the Atlantic essentially a nonstarter.

And while bull sharks are capable of extraordinary freshwater journeys, we couldn’t find historical evidence showing that one ever reached the upper Savannah River system before those dams existed.

So you can probably swim comfortably knowing that a bull shark isn’t circling underneath you.

Probably.

Because there’s one final problem.

Lake Hartwell is approximately 180 feet deep near the dam.

It covers almost 56,000 acres.

It has 962 miles of shoreline.

And Anderson County Emergency Management decided, entirely on its own, to remind everybody that there are definitely no sharks in it.

We’re sure that’s completely innocent.

The PumpkintownSC Verdict

Are there sharks in Lake Hartwell?

Officially: No.

Scientifically: There is no evidence whatsoever that sharks live in Lake Hartwell.

Historically: Bull sharks are capable of traveling through freshwater, making the old undammed Savannah River worth investigating, but we haven’t found evidence of one reaching this far upstream.

Conspiracy theory: A secret population of bull sharks has been hiding in 180 feet of water since before Hartwell Dam was built.

Probability: Extremely low.

Entertainment value: Extremely high.

Until somebody produces a photograph, tooth, carcass, or suspiciously shark-shaped bite out of a Lake Hartwell catfish, we’re siding with the government on this one.

Mostly.

After all, saying there are no sharks in Lake Hartwell is exactly what you would say if you were trying to keep the Lake Hartwell sharks a secret.