Appalachian History Series
Herrington Lake began as an idea on paper and ended as a reservoir that changed work, water, and recreation across central Kentucky. Kentucky Utilities planned the project in the early 1920s to produce hydroelectric power on the Dix River and to steady flows on the Kentucky River. Construction started in late 1923, the gates closed in March 1925, and commercial power followed in 1927. Contemporary accounts hailed Dix Dam as the world’s largest rock filled dam at the time of opening, and its form still dominates the gorge today.
Building the dam
Engineers raised a stone and concrete structure that stands about 287 feet above the riverbed and 1,087 feet across, with a 24 foot crest set on a base roughly 750 feet thick. That vertical drop helps explain why Herrington Lake is so deep near the dam, with a storage capacity on the order of 175 billion gallons. The 1920s hydroelectric plant sits at the base of the dam and the crest continues to carry a roadway.
The project was unusual for its era because a private utility financed and owned the works in the years just before public power reshaped the South. Kentucky Utilities led the job from 1923 to 1927 and retained title to the dam and lake bottom once the lake filled.
From river valley to deep lake
When the diversion tunnel closed in early 1925 the Dix River backed up through a forested gorge. Little timber was removed before impoundment, so hillsides and springs disappeared under rising water as the reservoir came to pool level that spring. Estimates put the surface area in the 2,300 to 2,600 acre range, winding along a very irregular shoreline that locals experience as many coves.
Families and landowners in the valley were relocated and paid for submerged ground. Residents remembered the loss of farms, mills, and a well known medicinal spring on the Weisiger place, even as the new lake created a large storage pool that steadied downstream flows and opened fresh space for recreation. By mid century people were flocking to Herrington Lake for boating, fishing, and lakeside camping.
By the late twentieth century the transformation was complete. Herrington’s lakeshore supported dozens of marinas and hundreds of homes, and anglers praised bass and panfish fisheries that thrived in the deep, cool water.
Boone, the Dix, and an older idea about power
Long before turbines, Kentuckians linked the Dix River to water power. Daniel Boone’s era produced a printed observation that “Dick’s River… affords many excellent mill seats,” a line that later engineers in the utility business took seriously. L. B. Herrington, the company engineer for whom the lake is named, drew inspiration from that eighteenth century description while pushing a twentieth century hydro scheme to completion.
Life with the dam
Herrington Lake freezes only in unusually severe winters, a fact recorded twice in living memory in 1936 and 1978. The reservoir supports bluegill, catfish, crappie, and multiple bass species. In 1991 Kentucky Utilities installed a trout fish ladder on the Dix River as part of an aquatic habitat project to protect and increase trout runs below the dam.
The dam’s hydro plant was refurbished in 2010 and produces roughly 30 to 33 megawatts when water is high. Nearby, the E. W. Brown Generating Station grew around the lake, adding coal units beginning in 1957 and later gas turbines, all of which rely on Herrington for cooling water and peaking support. While the Kentucky River can still flood, the ability to hold water at Herrington has helped reduce the worst downstream impacts and has been part of the navigation and flood moderation story since the 1920s.
Why this project matters in Appalachian history
Dix Dam shows how private capital and utility engineering reshaped a river valley on the Bluegrass edge of Appalachia. It linked rural communities to modern electric service, tied local economies to a man made lake, and set a regional precedent for mixing generation, recreation, and watershed management in one place. The physical scale was new for Kentucky, yet the logic was old. Since the first printed descriptions of Kentucky, the Dix had been counted as a power river, and in the 1920s engineers turned that note into stone, concrete, and spinning steel.
Sources and further reading
John Filson, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (1784), section on Dick’s River and mill seats. Full text, University of Michigan’s Early American Imprints. Quod Libet
Caufield & Shook photographs of Dix Dam and the hydro plant (1928), University of Louisville Digital Collections. Aerial views and interior power-house images. digital.library.louisville.edu+1
LG&E and KU, E. W. Brown Generating Station overview, hydro capacity and site description. LG&E and KU
Herrington Lake Conservation League, “Herrington Lake History,” project dimensions and “largest rock-fill dam” claim. HLCL
Harrodsburg Historical Society, “Dix Dam,” construction summary and 1927 completion note. The Harrodsburg Historical Society
WEKU, “Dix Dam: A Daniel Boone-sparked idea,” modern feature that recounts the Boone connection with interviews. Weku