The De Cordova Bend Dam is a man-made

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, a ...

on the

Brazos River The Brazos River ( , ), called the ''Río de los Brazos de Dios'' (translated as "The River of the Arms of God") by early Spanish explorers, is the 11th-longest river in the United States at from its headwater source at the head of Blackwater Dr ...

Hood County, Texas Hood County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 61,598. Its county seat is Granbury. The county is named for John Bell Hood, a Confederate lieutenant general and the c ...

, United States, controlled by the

Brazos River Authority The Brazos River Authority or BRA was created in 1929 by the Texas Legislature as a quasi-governmental entity to manage the Brazos River as a water resource in Texas. It was originally named the Brazos River Conservation and Reclamation District ...

. De Cordova Bend Dam forms the

Lake Granbury Lake Granbury is a North Texas reservoir near Granbury, Texas. It was created in 1969 and is one of three lakes damming the Brazos River. Lake Granbury is contained by the De Cordova Bend Dam and is a long, narrow lake, encompassed by 103 mile ...

. The dam is so named because of the clockwise almost-complete loop in the Brazos River named De Cordova Bend after

Jacob De Cordova Jacob Raphael De Cordova (6 June 1808 – 26 January 1868) was the founder of the ''Jamaica Gleaner''. He settled in Texas in 1839 and lived in Galveston. After living in Galveston, De Cordova moved to Houston, Texas where he was elected ...

. The dam is one of only three damming the Brazos River.

Location and access

The dam is located at (32.37393, -97.68753). The dam is southeast of

Granbury, Texas Granbury is a city in and the county seat of Hood County, Texas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 10,958, and it is the principal city of the Granbury micropolitan statistical area. Granbury is named after Confede ...

and road access is available by Rainey Ct which crosses the dam.

History

The lake was first proposed in the late 1950s. Construction was begun on the Cordova Bend Dam on December 15, 1966 by the H. B. Zachry Company.Lake Granbury from the Handbook of Texas Online
/ref> Impoundment of water began on September 15, 1969. The proposed construction of the De Cordova Bend Dam in the mid-1950s became the impetus for John Graves' book,

Goodbye to a River ''Goodbye to a River'' is a book by John Graves, published in 1960. It is a "semi-historical" account of a canoe trip made by the author during the fall of 1957 down a stretch of the Brazos River in North Central Texas, between Possum Kingdom D ...

References

External links

Brazos River Authority website about Lake Granbury and De Cordova Dam
{{refend Dams in Texas Brazos River Authority dams Buildings and structures in Hood County, Texas Dams completed in 1969