Sally's Landing Under construction · Opening this winter
Sally Bottom Road descending through summer hardwoods, Center Hill Lake showing through the trees

Center Hill Lake · DeKalb County, Tennessee

Take the road the lake couldn’t take.

A private road down to the water, and a small retreat on the ridge above it. Two bedrooms. Made for two, sleeps four. Home 1 opens this winter.

November 27, 1948

The lake took Sally’s bottom. It couldn’t take her road.

Before there was a lake, there was a river — and along it, bottomland farms named for the people who worked them.

In the winter of 1948 the gates of Center Hill Dam closed and the water rose over eighteen thousand acres. Whole bottoms went under: fields, fences, home places, the roads that served them.

One of those bottoms belonged to someone named Sally. The records don’t say who she was. Nobody we’ve found remembers. What’s left of her is the road that ran down to her land — Sally Bottom Road — and it ends on ours, at the water.

Whoever Sally was, her road belongs to lovers now.

Layered limestone cut bank along the lower section of Sally Bottom Road
The cut bank, roughly halfway down. The road was carved here long before the lake existed.

Nobody walked the road down. I did.

Jacob Chalmers · 11 Acres LLC
Gravel road running downhill between hardwoods on the 11-acre property
The upper road in July. Fifteen to twenty minutes on foot from the ridge to the water.

The walk

A road, not a view.

The property borders Center Hill Lake but sits above it, out of sight of the water. What it has instead is the thing no neighbour has: the road itself, private the whole way down.

  1. The ridge

    Where the home is, and everything on its deck — hot tub, sauna, cold plunge, outdoor shower. You start here.

  2. The cut bank

    The road narrows between banks of layered rock. The gate goes here.

  3. The water through the trees

    The lake shows itself about two-thirds of the way down, and doesn’t stop.

  4. The landing

    Where the road ends. Nothing is built down here yet, and there is no dock and no beach — just the end of a road that survived a lake. That is the point of it.

On the ridge

One home first. Six planned.

A two-bedroom retreat on the ridge — timber, glass, a deck into the trees — with a hot tub, a sauna and a cold plunge a few steps from the door, an outdoor shower, a screen for the nights the sky is too good to go inside, and a net built into the deck itself. Made for two. Sleeps four when you want to bring them.

The block walls went up in August. The roof went on and the deck was framed in September. None of the six things above are on the deck yet; we will post each one the day it lands.

We’re building it in the open: the budgets, the permits, the things that go wrong. If you want the unglamorous version, that’s the one we post.

  • Land11.09 acres
  • WhereDeKalb County, TN
  • WaterBorders Center Hill Lake
  • Ridge to water15–20 min on foot
  • Homes1 now, 6 planned
  • Home 12 bedrooms · sleeps 4
  • On the deckHot tub · sauna · cold plunge
  • OpeningThis winter
  • Getting downPrivate road, on foot
Drone view of the first house, roof on, in the trees on the ridge, with Center Hill Lake beyond the far hills
Roof on, September 2026. The lake in the distance is what the road walks down to — not what the house looks at.

Before it opens

Ask for your dates before the calendar does.

Booking opens this winter, and the people on this list get first refusal.

Tell us when you’d like to come and how many of you there are. You’ll get a reply from Jacob, not a form letter, and those dates are held for you first when the calendar opens.

No deposit now. Nothing is charged until the house is finished, the dates are confirmed, and you’ve said yes.

Not ready to pick dates? Leave just your email and skip the rest.

Two bedrooms, sleeps four. Dates are a request, not a booking, until we confirm them with you by email. One email when booking opens; unsubscribe any time.