Buchanan Dam
Burnet, Burnet County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1931, the Central Texas Hydro-Electric Company planned to build a dam on the Colorado River on the county line of Burnet and Llano counties. However, in April 1932, the project went bankrupt and lay unfinished. State Senator Alvin Wirtz took the project, and, unable to secure private funding, turned to government. Wirtz secured the support of U.S. Representative and Chairman of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee J.P. Buchanan by promising to name the dam after him. In 1934, House Bill No 1. of the 43rd Texas Legislature created the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), a conservation and reclamation district, in order to “control, store, preserve, use, distribute, and sell” the waters of the Colorado River. In the midst of the Great Depression, Buchanan Dam, often called the Hamilton Dam, and Inks Dam further downriver provided badly needed jobs to Burnet County residents. Locals lined up to receive one of the 1,800 new positions, mostly construction jobs paying 40 cents an hour. The salaries allowed families to maintain a better standard of living as well as supplement their farming income. In October 1937, the LCRA celebrated completion of the dam with a ceremony. Upstream flooding behind the Buchanan Dam, creating Lake Buchanan, had immediate effects on the community. Many long-term residents moved out of the path of the new lake. Around sixty graves interred in Old Bluffton Cemetery were re-interred in New Bluffton in Llano County. The lake’s recreational potential brought new business and residents to Burnet and Llano, and fishing camps and vacation rentals were built near its shore. Since its inception, Buchanan Dam has brought numerous advantages to Burnet County. (2023)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When a private dam project on the Colorado River went bankrupt in 1932, State Senator Alvin Wirtz turned to Washington, winning the backing of Congressman J.P. Buchanan — and the dam's name — to finish it. The 1934 Texas Legislature created the Lower Colorado River Authority to manage the river, and in the depths of the Depression the project put some 1,800 locals to work at 40 cents an hour. Completed in 1937, the dam raised Lake Buchanan behind it, drowning old Bluffton and forcing the relocation of graves, but bringing recreation, business, and steady power to the Hill Country.
Why it matters
Buchanan Dam embodies the New Deal bargain that reshaped rural America — federal money and public authorities taming rivers to deliver jobs, flood control, and electricity to communities that private capital had abandoned.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the Great Depression struck, rural Central Texas was already hard country. Farm families along the Colorado River lived with the river's floods and droughts, and many had no electricity at all. Private companies had begun to see the river as a source of hydroelectric power, but the economic collapse of the early 1930s dried up the money needed to build on that scale.
Nationally, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was changing the rules. The federal government was now willing to fund enormous public works projects, both to put people back to work and to bring flood control and cheap power to places private capital had passed over. Public river authorities, the Tennessee Valley Authority being the most famous, became the model for taming American rivers.
Texas followed with its own version. In 1934 the Legislature created the Lower Colorado River Authority, a public conservation and reclamation district charged with controlling, storing and selling the waters of the Colorado. Buchanan Dam was where that new idea first took physical shape.
People & events
The dam began as a private venture. In 1931 the Central Texas Hydro-Electric Company planned a dam on the Colorado at the line between Burnet and Llano counties. In April 1932 the project went bankrupt and sat half-finished, a monument to the Depression itself.
State Senator Alvin Wirtz refused to let it die. When he could not find private money, he turned to government. He won over U.S. Representative J.P. Buchanan, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, in part by promising that the dam would bear his name. With federal support behind it and the new LCRA created to run it, construction moved forward. Wirtz has another place in Texas history as an early mentor to a young Lyndon B. Johnson, who won Buchanan's seat in Congress after the congressman died in 1937.
For local families, the dam meant work. Some 1,800 jobs opened up, mostly construction at 40 cents an hour, and people lined up to get them. The wages let families live better and eased the strain on struggling farms. The LCRA celebrated the dam's completion in October 1937. The rising lake behind it also had costs: longtime residents moved away from the flood zone, and around sixty graves were moved from Old Bluffton Cemetery to New Bluffton in Llano County.
Its place in the American story
Buchanan Dam captures the New Deal bargain in concrete. Where private enterprise had failed, public authorities and federal money stepped in to build infrastructure that reshaped whole regions: flood control, water supply, electricity and jobs all at once. Across the country, from the Tennessee Valley to the Columbia River, similar projects transformed rural America in the 1930s.
The story also shows how that transformation was made. It took personal politics (a promise to name a dam after a congressman), new public institutions and the labor of thousands of local workers. It also asked sacrifices of the people whose homes, farms and even burial grounds lay in the path of the water.
The LCRA went on to build a chain of dams and reservoirs along the Colorado that became known as the Highland Lakes. That system continues to shape water, power and recreation across Central Texas today. Buchanan Dam was the first link.
If you visit
Buchanan Dam is a striking sight. Built as a long series of concrete arches, it stretches roughly two miles across the Colorado, with Lake Buchanan spread out wide behind it. Take time to walk or drive near it and appreciate the scale of what Depression-era workers built at 40 cents an hour.
The lake itself is the dam's other legacy. Just as the marker describes, fishing camps, rental cabins and lakeside communities grew up along its shores, and it remains a popular spot for boating, fishing and simply enjoying the Hill Country landscape. Remember as you look out over the water that old Bluffton lies somewhere beneath it.
The dam fits beautifully into a Highland Lakes road trip through Burnet and Llano counties. Follow the chain of lakes the LCRA created, stop in the area's small towns, and let the drive tell the story of how a river was remade during the hardest decade of the twentieth century.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Alvin Wirtz
- · J.P. Buchanan
Themes & tags
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