| LEWISVILLE LAKE.
Lewisville Lake is on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River one
mile northeast of Lewisville and fifteen miles southeast of
Denton in southeastern Denton County. The reservoir is owned
by the United States government and operated by the United
States Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District; its
purpose is to control potential flood waters originating
within the Elm Fork drainage basin. In addition, the lake
assists in soil conservation, serves as a recreational area,
and provides water for local municipalities.
Lewisville Lake is the second
water-storage reservoir to impound the waters of the Elm Fork
on this site. The first facility, Lake Dallas, served for
thirty-one years as the principal source of municipal water
for its owner, the city of Dallas. Construction of this lake,
with its eighty-foot-high, 11,000-foot-long dam located near
the village of Garza (renamed Lake Dallas, Texas, in 1929),
began in February 1928. The lake was built by the W. E.
Callahan Construction Company at a cost of just over $3
million. It had a 194,000-acre-foot capacity at an elevation
of 525 feet and covered over 10,000 acres. It was nine miles
long and three miles wide and had a forty-three-mile
shoreline.
As flood control and conservation became
more serious issues in the 1940s, Congress responded by
passing the River and Harbor Act of March 2, 1945, which
called for the construction of four flood-control lakes within
the Trinity River basin. On November 28, 1948, the Corps of
Engineers began work on a new Denton County dam and lake that
would impound the waters of Clear, Little Elm, Stewart, Pecan,
and Hickory creeks in addition to those of the Trinity River's
Elm Fork. Although the 125-foot-high and 33,000-foot-long dam
was not completed until 1955, impoundment began on November 1,
1954. The total cost of this project, known originally as the
Garza-Little Elm Reservoir and Dam, was $21,756,500, with the
cities of Dallas, Highland Park, University Park, and Denton
contributing to the cost in exchange for access to the water.
The new reservoir, popularly called Garza-Little Elm Lake,
incorporated the older and smaller Lake Dallas on October 28,
1957, when the old Garza Dam was breached. The huge lake that
resulted was thirteen miles long, had a 183-mile shoreline and
a capacity of 436,000 acre-feet at an elevation of 515 feet,
and covered almost one-fifth of Denton County.
The joining of Lake Dallas and
Garza-Little Elm Reservoir apparently led to confusion
concerning the facility's legal name, a problem which was
compounded when the government redesignated the dam as
Lewisville Dam in 1955 and the lake as Lewisville Reservoir in
1960. However, the decision concerning the lake's name was
reversed the following year. Garza-Little Elm Reservoir
remained the lake's official title until the mid-1970s, when
it was renamed Lewisville Lake.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: C. A. Bridges, History
of Denton, Texas, from Its Beginning to 1960 (Waco: Texian
Press, 1978). E. Dale Odom and Bullitt Lowry, A Brief
History of Denton County (Denton, Texas, 1975). C. L.
Dowell, Dams and Reservoirs in Texas: History and
Descriptive Information (Texas Water Commission Bulletin
6408 [Austin, 1964]). |
