Baylor Lake (Red River Basin)

Baylor Lake (also called Baylor Creek Reservoir) is located twelve miles west of Childress in Childress County on the Baylor Creek, a tributary of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, and is owned by the City of Childress. Certificate of Adjudication No. 02-5221issued by the Texas Water Commission authorized the owner to build and maintain a dam and reservoir on Baylor Creek (Baylor Lake) and to impound not to exceed 9,200 acre-feet of water for municipal use. Reservoir construction began in April 1949 and was completed in February 1950. Deliberate impoundment began in December 1949. Baylor Creek Dam is a rolled-earth structure, 3,383 feet long and 66 feet high above the creekbed, with the top of the dam at elevation 1,829 feet above mean sea level. One spillway is an uncontrolled, open-channel cut in the natural bank with a bottom width of 200 feet with crest elevation at 1,820 feet above mean sea level. The second or emergency spillway is a cut through the embankment with crest length of 500 feet at elevation 1,820 feet above mean sea level. This section has a 5-foot-high earth fuse plug with top at elevation 1,825 feet above mean sea level, designed to wash out during extreme floods. At its conservation pool elevation, 1,820 feet above mean sea level, the lake could store 9,220 acre feet of water, encompassing a surface area of about 610 acres. The dam controls a drainage area of approximately 40 square miles.