Natural feature
Lake Travis
Vast reservoir on the Colorado River, held back by a concrete gravity dam raised mid-build after a catastrophic flood.
Location
About this audio guide
Lake Travis in Austin is not quite what it looks like from the shore, and this guide follows the concrete gravity dam that made it: an engineering plan for a modest two-hundred-foot structure that a violent nineteen thirty-eight flood forced back to the drawing board mid-construction. It traces how depression-era crews under contractor Brown and Root rebuilt the design to fight water pressure from both above and below the foundation. Look past the water to the structure actually holding it back.
This audio guide was created using AI.