Sometime this summer, a man-made, 1,000-acre recreational lake is due to open to the public in Carroll County, Tenn. The new lake is a $22.5 million public investment in the tourism potential of a rural county that seeks economic development and diversification.

As recently as the mid-1990s, one of every five county jobs was in the apparel industry, says Brad Hurley, president of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, which doubles as the county's economic development arm. Factories making shirts, pajamas and jeans employed people by the hundreds. By 2000, after a cascade of plant closings, all of those jobs had vanished.