Appalachian History Series – Dix Dam and Herrington Lake: A Private Power Experiment That Remade a Kentucky Valley
Before Herrington Lake existed, the future dam and bridge site was a steep river gorge on the lower Dix. A later Kentucky Transportation Cabinet review, drawing on historic bridge records, described the crossing as a place where the Mercer County side had once been nearly a sheer cliff above the river. Contemporary observers were already struck by the scale of what was beginning there. In November 1923, a Kentucky newspaper called the project the “greatest piece of construction work ever” seen in the state and emphasized the stone-walled gorge near High Bridge and Shakertown where the hydro-electric site was being built.
The plan grew out of the early twentieth century push for more electric power. LG&E and KU’s historical summary says local resident L. B. Herrington developed the idea of using the Dix River for generation, and that the Kentucky Hydro-Electric Co. and the Dix River Power Company, later absorbed into Kentucky Utilities, carried the work forward. A Kentucky Public Service Commission filing later summarized that the Dix River Power Company had filed its declaration of intent in 1922, which places the scheme firmly in the utility expansion politics of the early 1920s rather than as a later Depression-era work.
Building Kentucky’s great rockfill dam
The engineering ambition was enormous. Lewis A. Schmidt Jr., writing for the American Society of Civil Engineers, later stated that Dix Dam was built to a height of 275 feet in 1923 to 1925 and was then the highest rockfill dam constructed. The National Register survey for Mercer County likewise remembered it as the largest earth and stone dam in existence at the time of completion in 1925. That same preservation record noted that a temporary town had to be created nearby to house, feed, and entertain roughly 2,000 workers, a reminder that the project was not just a dam but a whole short lived industrial settlement in the countryside.
The job drew attention well beyond Mercer and Garrard counties. Pit & Quarry featured “DIX DAM EQUIPMENT” in late 1925, showing that the work had become notable in the national construction trade press. The dam was a local undertaking in one sense, but it was also being watched as a major modern engineering job, one worth visiting and one worth reporting to an audience interested in machinery, quarrying, and heavy construction methods.
Camp life and conflict
The history of Dix Dam cannot be told honestly as a simple story of progress. In November 1924, Associated Press reports said armed white workers drove hundreds of Black laborers from the construction camp after the killing of Edward Winkly. Other dispatches reported that National Guard troops were sent to the site, that six men were jailed, and that guards remained on duty while quiet was restored after clashes involving white workers, local farmers, and Black laborers. The project camp was therefore also a place of racial violence and labor tension, not just a monument to engineering ambition.
Turning a river into a lake
The decisive transformation came in the spring of 1925. Kentucky Transportation Cabinet records tied to the Herrington Lake bridge history state that water began impounding in the lake on March 17, 1925. Because the new reservoir would cut across existing travel routes, the bridge on Kennedy Bridge Road was built specifically to keep the road open once Herrington Lake was created, and it was turned over to the adjoining counties on April 7, 1925. The lake and the transportation system around it were therefore remade at the same time.
The strongest official chronology places the beginning of hydroelectric generation later that same year. LG&E and KU marked the station’s centennial by stating that Dix Dam began producing hydroelectric power in November 1925, and current plant data list the initial operation date the same way. That dating matters because some later image catalog descriptions repeat a 1927 completion date, but the state bridge history, company chronology, and present operating data together point most strongly to impoundment in March 1925 and hydro operation in November 1925.
From industrial wonder to resort landscape
Almost immediately, the dam became both a utility structure and a spectacle. The Mercer County National Register survey says rail excursions brought tourists from Cincinnati to see the work. By the late 1920s, photographers were already documenting the site from the air and from inside the generating plant. University of Louisville digital collections preserve 1928 aerial views labeled “Dix River Dam and Power House,” along with late 1928 and 1929 images of the power facility, transformers, and interior spaces. The visual record makes clear that Dix Dam was understood very early as a landmark worth looking at, not merely a hidden industrial installation.
Kentucky Historical Society postcard records show the same shift from work site to attraction. Cards from the later 1920s and 1930s advertised the project as the largest rock filled power dam east of the Rockies and described Herrington Lake as a major fishing and sightseeing place. In those postcards, the dam was sold as both technological marvel and leisure backdrop, which tells us a great deal about how Kentuckians and visitors were taught to see the new landscape.
By 1939, the Federal Writers’ Project treated Herrington Lake as an established part of Kentucky travel culture. Its guide described the lake as 35 miles long, covering 3,600 acres, reaching depths of 250 feet, and offering fishing, swimming, cabins, and motorboats. It also noted a floating bass hatchery at Gwinn Island. Elsewhere, the same guide observed that Harrodsburg’s industries were operating on power furnished by the Dix Dam hydro-electric plant and that the town’s tourist and resort trade had become enormous. In little more than a decade, a private hydro project had become woven into regional economy, recreation, and place identity.
The long legacy of Dix Dam
The story did not end when the generators started. Schmidt’s ASCE study later used Dix Dam as an important case in rockfill dam performance, discussing leakage, maintenance, condition, and settlement after decades of operation. By the turn of the twenty first century, Herrington Lake had also become the subject of state and federal water quality and watershed planning. Kentucky’s Division of Water identified the Dix River and Herrington Reservoir watershed for targeted clean water work in 1999, and USGS studies in 2000 and 2012 examined the lake’s hydrodynamics, water quality, and impoundment safety in technical detail. The reservoir that had once symbolized industrial modernity had become, over time, a managed environmental system as well.
Dix Dam changed more than a river. It turned a narrow gorge into a long deep lake, forced the building of new roads and bridges, brought a temporary town of laborers into a rural district, and created a landscape where utility infrastructure, tourism, fishing culture, and memory all came together. Herrington Lake may seem permanent now, but its permanence was made in a few intense years in the 1920s, when private power ambition reshaped a central Kentucky valley in ways the region still lives with today.
Sources & Further Reading
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Herrington Lake DNA – Appendices.” Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, 2011. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/Planning%20Studies%20and%20Reports/Herrington%20Lake%20DNA%20-%20Appendices.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Preliminary Geotechnical Assessment, Garrard-Mercer Counties, CID 17-1206.” Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, March 2011. https://transportation.ky.gov/Construction-Procurement/Project%20Related%20Information/Garrard-Mercer%20Counties%20-%20CID%2017-1206%20-%20Preliminary%20Geotechnical%20Assessment%20dated%20March%202011.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Item 7-1116.00 Bridge Replacement on Herrington Lake, KY 152 at Mercer/Garrard County Line.” Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, June 6, 2011. https://transportation.ky.gov/planning/planning%20studies%20and%20reports/herrington%20lake%20dna.pdf
National Park Service. “Historic Resources of Mercer County, Kentucky.” National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1987. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000242_text
“The Dix River Dam.” Falmouth Outlook, November 16, 1923. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ndnp/kyu/batch_kyu_mastiff_ver01/data/sn86069021/00516997722/1923111601/0371.pdf
Pit & Quarry. “Dix Dam Equipment.” November 15, 1925. https://archive.org/download/sim_pit-quarry_1925-11-15_11_4/sim_pit-quarry_1925-11-15_11_4.pdf
University of Louisville Digital Collections. “Dix Dam, aerial view, Lancaster, Kentucky, 1928.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://digital.library.louisville.edu/concern/images/ulpa_cs_095345?locale=en
University of Louisville Digital Collections. “Dix Dam, aerial view, Lancaster, Kentucky, 1928.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://digital.library.louisville.edu/concern/images/ulpa_cs_095347?locale=de
University of Louisville Digital Collections. “Dix Dam power facility, Dix River, Kentucky, 1928.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://digital.library.louisville.edu/concern/images/ulpa_cs_096691?locale=de
Kentucky Historical Society. “Dix River Dam, Near High Bridge and Burgin, ‘In Old Kentucky.’” Digital Collections. Accessed March 18, 2026. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/PH/id/9898/
Kentucky Historical Society. “Dix River Hydro-Electric Dam, Near High Bridge and Burgin, Ky.” Digital Collections. Accessed March 18, 2026. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/PH/id/9900/
National Archives at Atlanta. “Office of the Chief of Engineers, Historical Photographs.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/atlanta/finding-aids/rg77-louisville-photos.html
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. “Olmsted Associates Records, 1863-1971.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms001018.3
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. “Olmsted Associates records, 1863-1971.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/ms001018.mss52571.05155_bak
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “Index – MBR,” Kentucky Utilities Co., Dix Dam entry. Accessed March 18, 2026. https://mbrweb.ferc.gov/SearchlkpEIA/Index?page=23
LG&E and KU. “LG&E and KU Celebrate 100 Years of Generating Renewable Energy at Dix Dam.” November 14, 2025. https://lge-ku.com/newsroom/press-releases/2025/11/14/lge-and-ku-celebrate-100-years-generating-renewable-energy-dix
Daviess, Maria T. History of Mercer and Boyle Counties. Harrodsburg, KY: Harrodsburg Herald, 1924. https://archive.org/details/MercerBoyleCo
Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Kentucky. Kentucky; a Guide to the Bluegrass State. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939. https://archive.org/details/kentuckyguidetob00federich
McFarlan, Arthur C. Behind the Scenery in Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1958. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/RB/id/6721/
U.S. Geological Survey. Methods for Noninvasive Bathymetric and Velocity Surveys for Impoundment Safety: A Case Study of Herrington Lake at Dix Dam near Burgin, Kentucky. Scientific Investigations Map 3198. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 2012. https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3198/pdf/Ruby-SIM_032612web.pdf
Crain, Angela S., Allison A. Shipp, Thomas O. Mesko, and G. L. Jarrett. Modeling Hydrodynamics and Water Quality in Herrington Lake, Kentucky. Water-Resources Investigations Report 99-4281. Louisville: U.S. Geological Survey, 2000. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/1999/4281/report.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Monitoring Location 03286000, Herrington Lake Near Burgin, KY.” Accessed March 18, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/03286000/
Kentucky Division of Water. Herrington Lake – Dix River Clean Water Action Plan. Frankfort: Kentucky Division of Water, 2018. https://eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/Water/Reports/Reports/NPS9923-Herrington.pdf
Kentucky Division of Water. Dix River / Herrington Reservoir Watershed Plan. Frankfort: Kentucky Division of Water, 2011. https://eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/Water/Reports/Reports/NPS0211-DixRiver.pdf
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. The Age and Growth of the White Bass of Herrington Lake, Kentucky. Frankfort: Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, 1950. https://fw.ky.gov/Fish/Documents/FishBulletin008.pdf
Ellis, William E. The Kentucky River. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_geography/2/
Author Note: This story follows the making of Herrington Lake through highway files, preservation records, newspapers, and technical studies rather than later legend alone. I wanted to show not only the engineering feat, but also the roads, labor tensions, tourism, and landscape changes that the dam set in motion.