Lake Houston

Type: General Entry

Published: 1976

Updated: May 2, 2017

Lake Houston lies on the San Jacinto River four miles north of Sheldon and eighteen miles northeast of Houston in Harris County (centered at 29°55' N, 95°08' W). The man-made lake is held by the sixty-two-foot-high earthfill San Jacinto Dam and concrete spillway section, engineered by Ambursen Engineering. The lake is owned and operated by the City of Houston for municipal, industrial, recreational, mining, and irrigation purposes. Construction began in November 1951, and the dam was completed in December 1953. A sedimentation survey made in 1965 records a storage capacity of 146,700 acre-feet and a surface area of 12,240 acres at the spillway crest elevation of 43.8 feet above mean sea level. The drainage area above the dam is 2,828 square miles. The dam, just below the confluence of the east and west forks that form the San Jacinto River, is three miles upstream from Magnolia Gardens. The lake is crossed by the Missouri Pacific line at the McKay Bridge and by Farm Road 1960.

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C. L. Dowell, Dams and Reservoirs in Texas: History and Descriptive Information (Texas Water Commission Bulletin 6408 [Austin, 1964]).

Places:

Houston
Upper Gulf Coast
East Texas

The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.

Seth D. Breeding, “Lake Houston,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed June 28, 2022, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/lake-houston.

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Original Publication Date:: 1976
Most Recent Revision Date:: May 2, 2017

This entry belongs to the following Handbook Special Projects:


Linked Data from the Texas Almanac:
Place: Magnolia Gardens
Currently Exists: No
Place Type: Town
USGS ID: 1362082
Town Fields: Has post office: No

Is Incorporated: No
Belongs to: Harris County
Coordinates: Latitude: 29.88661180°

Longitude: -95.11270820°

Adoption Status: ✅: This place is available for adoption!
Adopted by:: Your name goes here
Dedication Message:: Your message goes here

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