Lady Bird Lake
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| Lady Bird Lake | |
|---|---|
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| Location | central Austin, Texas |
| Coordinates | |
| Lake type | Power plant cooling/recreational reservoir |
| Primary inflows | Colorado River |
| Primary outflows | Colorado River |
| Basin countries | United States |
| Surface area | 468 acres (1.89 km²) |
| Max. depth | 18 ft (5.5 m) |
| Surface elevation | 428 ft (130 m) |
Lady Bird Lake (formerly Town Lake) is a reservoir on the Colorado River in downtown Austin, Texas, in the United States. The reservoir was formed in 1960 by the construction of Longhorn Dam at its eastern boundary by the City of Austin. The western end of the lake is bounded by Tom Miller Dam, built in 1939. The lake was created for several reasons, including the need for a cooling pond for the Holly Street Power Plant. The reservoir was also envisioned from the beginning as a recreational venue for the city.[1] A system of hike and bike trails was built along the shoreline of the lake in the 1970s, establishing Lady Bird Lake as a major recreational attraction for the city of Austin.
On July 26, 2007, the Austin City Council passed a resolution authorizing the renaming of the reservoir from Town Lake to Lady Bird Lake in honor of Lady Bird Johnson, the former First Lady of the United States and a long-time resident of the Austin area.[2] Johnson had declined the honor of having the lake renamed for her during her life. In renaming the lake, the City Council recognized Johnson for her dedication to beautifying the lake and her efforts to create a recreational trail system around the lake's shoreline.[3]
Lady Bird Lake is the easternmost lake of a chain of reservoirs on the Colorado River. This chain, known locally as the Highland Lakes, include Lake Buchanan, Inks Lake, Lake LBJ, Lake Marble Falls, Lake Travis, and Lake Austin.
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[edit] Recreational uses
Lady Bird Lake is a major recreation area as its banks are bounded by the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail, businesses offer recreational watercraft services along the lakefront portion of the trails, Austin's Zilker Park is located on the trails, and Barton Springs flows into the lake. Much of the landscaped beauty of the parks surrounding Lady Bird Lake can be credited to the former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, who, in the 1970s, focused her attention on the Town Lake Beautification Project.
The Congress Avenue Bridge spans the Lady Bird Lake and is home to the largest urban, Mexican Free-tailed Bat colony in North America with a summer population of 1.5 million bats. At dusk, from March to September, Austinites and tourists line the bridge and riverbanks to watch the dramatic sight of the bats streaming out in their nightly quest for insects. Eight other bridges span the lake, including two that are pedestrian-only bridges.
Although the City of Austin prohibits motorized watercraft, the lake serves as a recreational area for kayaks, canoes, dragon boats, and rowing shells. Austin's warm climate and the river's calm waters, nearly ten-mile length and straight courses are especially popular with crew teams and clubs. Along with the University of Texas women's rowing team and coeducational club rowing team, who practice on Lady Bird Lake year-round, teams from northern universities (including the University of Chicago, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Nebraska) train on Lady Bird Lake during Christmas holidays and spring breaks. Other water sports along the shores of the lake include swimming in Deep Eddy Pool, the oldest swimming pool in Texas, and Barton Springs Pool, which discharges into Barton Creek and flows into Lady Bird Lake.
Music venues on the banks of Lady Bird Lake are home to a number of events year-round, including the Austin City Limits Music Festival in the fall, the Austin Reggae Festival and Spamarama in the spring, and many open-air concerts at Auditorium Shores on the south bank and Fiesta Gardens on the north bank. The Austin Aqua Festival was held on the shores of Lady Bird Lake from 1962 until 1998. The late Austin resident and blues guitar legend, Stevie Ray Vaughan played a number of concerts at Auditorium Shores and is honored with a memorial statue on the banks.
[edit] Hike and Bike Trail
The Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail, formerly the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail, is the longest trail designed for non-motorized traffic maintained by the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department and watched after by a local non-profit named Town Lake Trail Foundation. It is 10.1 miles long and one of the oldest urban Texas hike and bike paths stretching the entire length of Lady Bird Lake itself.
The trail is mostly flat, 97.5% has less than an 8% grade, and makes an easy loop along both shores of Lady Bird Lake being marked on one end by Tom Miller Dam and the other by Longhorn Dam. Barton Creek feeds into Lady Bird Lake from the south and a pedestrian bridge incorporated into the trail bridges Barton Creek. The Roberta Crenshaw Pedestrian Walkway bridges Lady Bird Lake beneath MoPac Boulevard and provides the trail's westmost crossing of Lady Bird Lake.
The trail's surface is smooth and is mostly crushed granite except for a few lengths of concrete and a short detour over city sidewalks on the South-side of the lake. There are several access points and the path goes by, through or across several Austin landmarks such as Zilker Park, Barton Creek, Auditorium Shores, Deep Eddy Pool and the Congress Avenue Bridge, where the largest urban colony of Mexican Free-tailed Bats roost between mid-March and early November.
Before 1971, the shoreline of what was then called Town Lake, was mostly a mixture of weeds, unkempt bushes and trash. Some concerned Austinites tried to clean up the lake, but the effort was only partly successful. In 1971, the City of Austin created the Town Lake Beautification Project and appointed Lady Bird Johnson as the project's honorary chairman. Johnson's involvement brought lots of attention and money (including $19,000 of her own) to the Town Lake project, allowing for the planting of hundreds of shrubs and trees and the completion of the Hike and Bike Trail from the piecemeal construction that had been done up to that time.[4]
[edit] Drinking water uses
The first water treatment facility in the City of Austin, the Thomas C. Green Water Treatment Plant, was built in 1925 to treat water from the Colorado River. The plant occupies six acres just west of the principal downtown business district. Since the creation of Longhorn Dam, the water treatment facility continues to treat water from Lady Bird Lake and Barton Creek for distribution as drinking water throughout downtown and central Austin.[5]
[edit] Fish populations
Lady Bird Lake has been stocked with several species of fish intended to improve the utility of the reservoir for recreational fishing. Fish present in Lady Bird Lake include largemouth bass, catfish, carp, and sunfish. A ban on the consumption of fish caught in the lake was issued by the City of Austin in 1990, as a result of excessively high levels of chlordane found in the fish.[6] Although the use of chlordane as a pesticide was banned in the United States in 1988, the chemical sticks strongly to soil particles and can continue to pollute groundwater for years after its application. The ban on the consumption of fish caught in the lake was finally lifted in 1999.[7]
[edit] External links
- Texas Parks and Wildlife: Town Lake
- Austin Parks and Recreation Department
- Town Lake Trail Foundation
- Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail Map
- Austin's Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail
[edit] References
- ^ "Town Lake". Handbook of Texas Online.
- ^ Raskin, Amy (2007). "Austin changes Town Lake name to Lady Bird Lake". Houston Chronicle. July 26, 2007.
- ^ Wilson, Janet (2007). "Lady Bird Johnson dies at 94". Austin American-Statesman. July 12, 2007.
- ^ Wear, Ben. "Lady Bird helped turn Town Lake into town treasure". Austin American-Statesman, July 13, 2007. pA1, A6.
- ^ City of Austin (2005). "Mayor Will Wynn Calls For Relocation Of Green Water Treatment Plant By June 2006". Press Release. Aug. 3, 2005.
- ^ Texas Environmental Almanac ."Water Quality". Texas Environmental Almanac. ch. 2, p. 6.
- ^ Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission (1999). "Regulations Committee Meeting". Commission meeting transcript. Nov. 17, 1999.
