TPWD acquired Fairfield Lake State Park by lease in 1971 from Texas Utilities, now Vistra Energy.
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Fairfield Lake State Park, located in Freestone County about 70 miles east of Waco, will close permanently on Feb. 28, after almost 50 years of public access. Vistra Energy owns the land and leases it to the state at no cost.
Fairfield Lake is the largest private lake in the state and is estimated to be about 50-feet deep. The property, marketed by Hortenstine Ranch Company, is in its namesake city of Fairfield and is about 90 miles southeast of Dallas.
Texas has some great lakes to live on throughout all regions of the state, including the DFW area in North Texas, Greater Houston, and the Highland Lakes chain on the Colorado River upstream of Austin. There's no shortage of premium Texas real estate near the water.
The first dam in Texas was completed in 1893 along the Colorado River, creating Lake Austin. Within a couple of decades, that initial experiment would be repeated all over the state. Throughout the early decades of the 20th century, Texas constructed numerous dams to flood farmland and create lakes.
Toledo Bend Reservoir, located on the Texas-Louisiana border, is the largest lake in Texas by volume and is also the largest man-made lake. It was formed by building a dam on the Sabine River and boasts a maximum depth of 110 feet. With a surface area of 185,000 acres, the reservoir holds 4,477,000 acre-feet of water.
The oldest man-made lake in Texas is Lake Austin.It was created in 1893 when a dam was built on the Colorado River, though the first dam failed in 1900. It is a thin lake that appears riverine on a map. It's maintained at a constant level by the outflows of other reservoirs along the same river system.
The largest designated natural lake touching the border of Texas is Sabine Lake, into which the Sabine and Neches rivers discharge. It is more properly a bay of the Gulf of Mexico. Also near the coast, in Calhoun County, is Green Lake, which at about 10,000 acres is one of the state's largest natural freshwater lakes.
Eagle Lake, in Colorado County, is at least as natural as Caddo, and so is Green Lake, in Calhoun County. In fact, not counting its deserty western portion, Texas is pretty darn damp. There are about seven thousand lakes scattered across Texas, the majority which are found in the wetter eastern third of the state.