Lake Lewisville
| Lewisville Lake | |
|---|---|
Aerial view of Lewisville Lake and Dam
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| Location | Denton County, Texas |
| Coordinates | 33°04′09″N 96°57′52″W / 33.06917°N 96.96444°WCoordinates: 33°04′09″N 96°57′52″W / 33.06917°N 96.96444°W |
| Type | reservoir |
| Primary inflows | Elm Fork of the Trinity River |
| Catchment area | 325,700 acres (1,318 km2) |
| Basin countries | United States |
| Managing agency | United States Army Corps of Engineers |
| Built | 1948 |
| First flooded | 1955 |
| Max. length | 58,080 ft (17.70 km) |
| Surface area | 29,592 acres (11,975 ha) |
| Max. depth | 67 ft (20 m) |
| Water volume | 555,000 acre·ft (685,000,000 m3) |
| Surface elevation | 522 ft (159 m) |
| Frozen | never |
| Settlements | Lewisville, Texas |
Lewisville Lake is a reservoir in North Texas (USA) on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River in Denton County near Lewisville. Originally engineered in 1927 as Lake Dallas, the reservoir was expanded in the 1940s and 1950s and renamed Lewisville Lake. It was built for flood control purposes and to serve as a water source for Dallas and its suburbs, but residents also use it for recreational purposes.
Lewisville Lake is the second lake to impound the waters of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River in this area. The W.E. Callahan Construction Company completed the Garza Dam in 1927 at a cost of $5 million, which created Lake Dallas. The dam was 10,890 feet (3,320 m) long with a 567-foot (173 m) long service spillway. The lake, with its 194,000-acre-foot (239,000,000 m3) capacity and forty-three miles of shoreline, was the principal municipal water source for the city of Dallas for 31 years.
In the 1940s, a need for increased water storage capacity and additional flood control became apparent. The United States Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1945, which called for additional construction in the Trinity River basin. The United States Army Corps of Engineers built the Garza-Little Elm Dam between 1948 and 1954 at cost of $23.4 million. The structure combined Lake Dallas, Hickory Creek, and Little Elm Creek. The 32,888-foot (10,024 m) long Lewisville Dam was completed in 1955, and the Garza Dam was breached in 1957 to create the new lake, known then as Garza-Little Elm Reservoir and renamed Lewisville Lake. This new lake had one hundred eighty-three miles of shoreline and a 436,000-acre-foot (538,000,000 m3) capacity. In 1998, additional modifications raised the lake's permanent level from 515 feet MSL to 522 feet MSL and increased the holding capacity to 555,000 acre-feet.
During construction, members of the Corps of Engineers stumbled upon an archaeological site. In 1956, Wilson W. Crook, Jr. and R.K. Harris announced Carbon-14(14C) testing on artifacts from the site, including a Paleo-Indian Clovis projectile point, indicated humans had lived there c. 36,000 BP. This led to much controversy in the archaeological community. It was not until 1978 the water levels would recede enough to access the site again. Between 1978 and 1980, Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution performed a thorough analysis of the site. He concluded the original dating was due to a rare form of cross-contamination and a date of c. 12,000 B.P. was more correct. Still, the site is considered one of the earliest inhabited by humans in the Southwestern United States and Mexico.
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