History
Construction of the then-named George W. Hamilton Dam was started in 1931 by a company controlled by Samuel Insull, but soon ended with the dam less than half completed when his highly leveraged public utility holding company collapsed during the Great Depression. In 1934, the Texas legislature authorized the formation of the Lower Colorado River Authority to complete the Hamilton dam. Following completion in 1937, the dam was renamed for U.S. Representative James P. Buchanan, who was involved obtaining federal funding the project from the Public Works Administration.
Construction of the dam required the relocation of the town of Bluffton, Texas. Relocation began in 1931 and was complete by 1939. A 2011 drought re-exposed the old Bluffton townsite.
Following a flood along the river in 1938, in which the dam was required to pass through all of the flow of water, there was criticism of the dam project as failing to meet its promise of preventing downstream floods. However, at the time it was pointed out that the Buchanan Dam was just the first in a series of four flood control dams, and that prevention of flooding would not be possible until they were finished.
Read more about this topic: Buchanan Dam
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–117)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)