Lake Buchanan and a submerged town – Texas

If you don’t want to get funny looks from people, you’ll say /buhk hăn uhn/ when in Texas.

Lake Buchanan is located in the Hill Country of Central Texas. Like most lakes in the state, it was artificially created as a water and hydroelectric power supply for the region. We visited Lake Buchanan during one of our road trips around Texas.

We stayed at the Canyon of the Eagles Resort, located on the mouth of Lake Buchanan and the Colorado River. It’s about a four-hour drive south of Dallas. The views of the lake down below were beautiful. Bald eagles nest in the area during the winter. Unfortunately, we did not see any but we enjoyed the magnificence of the flight of other big birds of prey.

View of Lake Buchanan from the Canyon of the Eagles resort

We took a cruise around the lake. Our guide, a retired schoolteacher, told us the story of the lake and the dam, completed in 1939. She even taught us the correct pronunciation of Burnet, a nearby town, with a rhyme that went like this: “It’s Burnet, durn it, can’t you learn it?” Really easy to remember. She also pointed out the local birds like egrets and herons.

An egret

The cruise included a tour of the remains of the town of Bluffton. In 1931, when the authorities started to plan the construction of the dam, the town was moved a few miles away and the site flooded. A severe drought exposed the ruins in 2011, which have become a tourist attraction ever since.

There isn’t much left of Bluffton. It’s not  exactly Atlantis.