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Lake Austin

Lake · Colorado River, Austin, Texas · 1940 · extant · Also known as: Lake McDonald (1893–1900)

The reservoir created by the Tom Miller Dam, completed in 1940. Its eastern shoreline forms the visible boundary of West Lake Hills and shaped the region's modern residential development.

Lake Austin, ca. 1940 · also known as Lake McDonald (1893–1900). Photograph forthcoming — placeholder illustration based on the place type.

Lake Austin replaced an earlier short-lived reservoir, Lake McDonald, which formed behind the original Austin Dam from 1893 until that dam washed out in 1900. The reconstructed Tom Miller Dam, completed in 1940, raised a stable lake whose shoreline became the eastern edge of the modern West Lake area. The lake bluffs along the western shore were among the first parcels of the old Davenport tract to be subdivided in the postwar years.

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