Texas Highland Lakes

The Texas Highland Lakes are a chain of man-made lakes formed by several dams on the Texas Colorado River, which winds Southeast from its headwaters near the border of Texas and New Mexico through Central Texas to the Gulf of Mexico.

The lakes and dams are:

• Buchanan Dam - Lake Buchanan
• Inks Dam - Inks Lake
• Wirtz Dam - Lake LBJ
• Starcke Dam - Lake Marble Falls
• Mansfield Dam - Lake Travis
• Tom Miller Dam - Lake Austin
• Longhorn Dam - Town Lake

The river, which had a history of major flooding, especially in the City of Austin, Texas, was "tamed" by the construction of the dams in the Texas Hill Country. Engineers used the hills to form the lakes' basins. With the exception of Longhorn Dam, all of the dams were constructed by the Lower Colorado River Authority during the 1930s and 1940s following two unsuccessful attempts to construct a dam upstream from Austin. The dams provided flood control and are used to generate hydroelectric power.

The City of Austin constructed Longhorn Dam and formed Town Lake in 1960 largely to help beautify the city and to form a cooling pond for its natural gas-burning power plant just north of the river.