Summersville Lake

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Bridge information
Summersville Lake
Summersville Lake
Impounds	Gauley River
Creates	Summersville Lake
Locale	Summersville, West Virginia
Maintained by	U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Huntington District
Length	2,280 feet (690 m)
Height	390 feet (120 m)
Construction began	1960
Opening date	1966
Carries	WV 129
Geographical Data
Coordinates	38.2231° N 80.8907° WCoordinates: 38.2231° N 80.8907° W

Summersville Lake is a man-made reservoir located in the US state of West Virginia. The lake is formed by a rock-fill dam (Summersville Dam) on the Gauley River, south of Summersville in Nicholas County. It is the largest lake in West Virginia, with 2,700 acres (1,100 ha) of water and over 60 miles (97 km) of shoreline at the summer pool water level.

1 Dam
2 Hydroelectric project
3 Recreation
4 Gallery
5 External links

[edit] Dam

Summersville Dam

The lake was constructed between 1960 and 1966 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in order to control flooding in an 803-square-mile (2,080 km²) watershed along the Gauley River and the Kanawha River. At 390 feet (120 m) tall, 2,280 feet (690 m) long, and containing 12,000,000 cubic yards (9,200,000 m³) of dirt and rock, the dam itself is the second-largest rock-fill dam in the Eastern United States. President Lyndon B. Johnson dedicated both the dam and a new Summersville Post Office on September 3, 1966.

The US Corps of Engineers broke a long-standing tradition in naming what was called the Summersville Project. Tradition holds that the project will be named after the town nearest the site of construction, unless named for a person (such as Hoover Dam). However, the town of Summersville was not the one nearest the dam. The village of Gad (located near the present-day marina) was literally flooded at the opening of the reservoir. After briefly considering the name "Gad Dam," it was instead decided to name the project after the next nearest town – Summersville.

[edit] Hydroelectric project

In 2001, a two-year project was completed to harness the dam outflow for hydroelectric power generation. The power plant has a capacity to generate 80-megawatts of electricity at peak flow. The thunderous noise caused by the plumes of water the formerly sounded from the base of Summersville Dam have been replaced by the quiet hum of electric generators.

[edit] Recreation

The lake also serves as a recreation area for fishing, boating, as well as snorkling and scuba diving. It serves as the eastern (upstream) end of Gauley River National Recreation Area, considered to be one of the best whitewater rafting sites in the world.