Longhorn Dam
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Longhorn Dam (also called Town Lake Dam) is a dam located at 30.2504, -97.7135 (WGS 84 datum) on the Colorado River within the corporate limits of Austin, Texas, USA. Longhorn Dam was built by the city of Austin and finished in 1960 as the last in a chain of Colorado River dams in central Texas started during the Great Depression. The dam derives its name because it was the ford across the Colorado for longhorn cattle drives as a part of the Chisholm Trail in the late 1800s.
The dam stands 36 feet (11 m) high and runs 506 feet (154 m) across. The "reservoir impoundment length," is 5 3/4 miles (9.3 km), creating Town Lake, a freshwater lake with a surface area of 525 acres (2.1 km²) and a 12.5 mile (20 km) shoreline. Town Lake both beautifies the city and ensures a constant water level to form a cooling lake for Austin's Holly Street Power Plant.
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