Canyon Lake Began Filling on a June Day in 1964

Crews started Canyon Dam on June 27, 1958. Six years later, on June 16, 1964, the gates began holding the Guadalupe River. Water spread through the valley behind a rolled-earth dam 6,830 feet long.

The project joined two Texas needs that do not always arrive together. It left space to catch floods above the normal pool and stored water below it for dry years. Recreation areas later grew around the new shoreline.

The result looks natural from a cove or bluff, but the lake is working infrastructure. Its beaches, ramps, water-supply pool, and empty flood space all trace back to that long earthen wall northwest of New Braunfels.