Appalachian History Series – Fishtrap Dam and Lake: How a 1960s Project Reshaped the Levisa Fork
Fishtrap Dam and Lake stand as one of the most important twentieth century federal construction projects in eastern Kentucky. Built on the Levisa Fork in Pike County, the project was designed first as a flood control work, but it also became a water supply source, a recreation site, a wildlife area, and a major turning point in the physical history of the valley it inundated. By the time the project entered operation in 1968 and reached completion in early 1969, it had altered roads, rail lines, schools, cemeteries, and old settlement patterns while tying Pike County more firmly to the long federal effort to manage the Ohio River Basin.
The Flood Control Origins of Fishtrap
The roots of Fishtrap Lake lay in the massive federal planning response to destructive flooding in the Ohio Valley during the 1930s. The Flood Control Act of June 28, 1938 approved the general comprehensive plan for flood control and other purposes in the Ohio River Basin and authorized funds for reservoirs and local flood protection works. In the Fishtrap Water Control Manual, the Corps later explained that Fishtrap Lake was authorized under that 1938 act and that the legislation was accompanied by House Report No. 2353, which in turn incorporated the earlier “Comprehensive Flood Control Plan, Ohio River Basin” submitted in November 1937. Fishtrap, then, was not an isolated local idea. It emerged from a basin-wide federal vision that treated eastern Kentucky as one part of a much larger hydrologic system.
Planning Fishtrap as Part of a Bigger System
Corps planning did not imagine Fishtrap as a single stand alone reservoir. The Water Control Manual states that the best plan for comprehensive flood relief in the Levisa Fork Basin would consist of a system of four reservoirs working alongside Dewey Lake and the Prestonsburg local backwater projects. In that design, Fishtrap was paired with the Pound Reservoir, now John W. Flannagan, the Haysi project on Russell Fork, and a proposed North Fork Lake. The manual also shows how engineers justified Fishtrap economically within that larger system and tied it to a controlled drainage area of 392 square miles. Later Corps summaries described the completed lake as being held by the highest dam in eastern Kentucky, a rolled rock embankment with an impervious core, 195 feet high, serving that same 392 square mile drainage basin.
That planning history matters because it explains why Fishtrap was never simply a local recreation lake. The project was meant to regulate floods on the Levisa Fork, reduce downstream damage on the Big Sandy and Ohio Rivers, maintain low flows, and support recreation and fish and wildlife conservation. The 2006 federal notice for the Fishtrap Lake Road Project summarized those authorized purposes clearly and described the broader project area as 15,786 acres, with roughly 12,000 acres leased for wildlife management.
Building the Dam and Reordering the Valley
Construction reshaped the valley over much of the 1960s. The Water Control Manual says project work was initiated in March 1961 with exploratory trenching, while the Corps’ public project history places the beginning of construction in the early 1960s and notes the scale of the undertaking. By the time major work was done, millions of cubic yards of earth and rock had been moved. The Corps also recorded a long construction sequence: outlet works began in 1964, dam construction in 1965, spillway work in 1966, dam closure in October 1968, operation beginning in October 1968, and completion of the dam and spillway in February 1969. Corps cost data in the manual placed construction cost at a little over $54.2 million.
The human changes were just as dramatic as the engineering ones. Corps records show that the road relocation program moved 8.1 miles of U.S. 460, 6.3 miles of state highways, and 17.5 miles of county roads. Power, telephone, rail communication lines, and gas lines also had to be rebuilt. Thirty miles of Chesapeake and Ohio Railway track and 4.8 miles of Norfolk and Western track were affected, including a tunnel. Eleven schools were relocated. Most striking of all, the relocation program moved 2,100 graves from 70 cemeteries in the project area. Fishtrap was a federal public works project, but it was also a large forced reorganization of an inhabited mountain landscape.
The Johnson Dedication in 1968
Fishtrap entered public memory in a particularly visible way on October 26, 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson came to dedicate the dam near Pikeville. In his remarks, Johnson presented the project as both practical and symbolic. He told the crowd that the dam would protect families and towns, encourage industry, and create a place for fishing, camping, swimming, and leisure. He also framed Fishtrap as evidence of a “growing, prospering, progressive Kentucky” and connected it to the broader Appalachian development politics of the 1960s. That dedication placed Fishtrap within the language of the Great Society as much as within the language of engineering.
What the Lake Covered and What It Preserved
Fishtrap did not flood an empty place. The Corps’ own historical summary says archaeological investigations in the Fishtrap area recorded 33 prehistoric Native American sites, including a rock shelter, village sites, and open camps. Excavations at the Slone, or Sloane, site at Woodside recovered about 65,000 artifacts. Later federal repatriation notices also confirmed that remains and cultural items from 15PI11, the Slone Site at Fishtrap Lake, were removed in 1963 and 1964 during legally authorized excavations. These sources make clear that the making of the reservoir also triggered an important salvage archaeology effort before inundation.
The Corps also remembered the pre-lake valley as a place of farms, timbering, hunting, and relative isolation. Its project page describes the lives of local pioneers as centered on subsistence farming, trapping, hunting, and timbering, shaped by the mountains of Pike County. That summary is simplified, but it captures an important truth. Fishtrap Lake submerged not only stream bottoms and transport routes, but also a lived landscape whose older economic and family patterns had developed long before the reservoir era.
Water Supply, Sediment, and Environmental Change
Fishtrap’s history did not end when the gates closed. The lake quickly became part of Pike County’s modern water story. The Corps states that water is released all year for municipal water supply at Pikeville, about 15 miles downstream. The Water Control Manual adds that the project’s summer pool and water supply storage were designed to maintain minimum releases of 75 cubic feet per second in summer and 10 cubic feet per second in winter even in dry years. This made Fishtrap more than a flood reservoir. It also became a managed source of dependable downstream flow.
At the same time, the reservoir brought the environmental burdens of the coalfields into sharper view. The Water Control Manual calls excessive sedimentation the most significant problem in the Fishtrap watershed and directly identifies coal mining, especially augering on and off federal lands, as the primary sediment source. The 1978 USGS sediment study confirmed the severity of the issue. In drainage basins above Fishtrap and Dewey, sediment yields were far higher where surface mining predominated than where underground mining methods predominated, and Fishtrap’s trap efficiency was reported at 89 percent with average annual deposition of 464 acre feet. Fishtrap was built to control water, but it also became a collecting basin for the environmental consequences of Appalachian extraction.
Later Federal Actions and the Problem of Access
Even after completion, Congress continued to modify Fishtrap’s history. Section 862 of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 authorized planning, engineering, and design to acquire residences and cemeteries in the drainage area and relocate owners and cemeteries despite the project already being complete. In 1989, Public Law 101-101 directed a reconnaissance study of roadway access problems at Fishtrap Lake and also addressed the purchase of property from willing sellers and relocation of owners. Those acts show that the reservoir had left unresolved issues on the ground that federal lawmakers still felt compelled to address years later.
By the late twentieth century and early twenty first century, access and development had become central questions. The Kentucky Legislative Research Commission’s 1999 task force report noted that Fishtrap faced difficulty of access to the lake and recreational sites, and it documented numerous state park and development proposals dating back to the early 1970s. The 2006 federal notice for the Fishtrap Lake Road Project made the issue even plainer. It stated that inundation to create Fishtrap Lake had affected access for certain nearby communities and that recreation alternatives and community access needs would guide road alternatives. In that sense, Fishtrap’s later history was not only about flood control success. It was also about the long afterlife of isolation, recreation dreams, and the difficulty of building roads and public amenities in a steep coalfield landscape.
Fishtrap’s Place in Appalachian History
Fishtrap Dam and Lake deserve to be remembered as more than a scenic body of water in Pike County. They represent the meeting point of New Deal and post New Deal flood policy, Appalachian development politics, Cold War era federal engineering, salvage archaeology, coalfield environmental change, and the displacement of older communities and cemeteries. The project did reduce flood risk and become part of the region’s water and recreation infrastructure. But it also revealed how large federal works in Appalachia could solve one problem while creating others that lasted for decades. Fishtrap’s history is therefore the history of modern eastern Kentucky itself, where public works, extraction, memory, and landscape have remained tightly bound together.
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Fishtrap Lake.” Last modified January 10, 2024. https://www.lrd.usace.army.mil/Mission/Projects/Article/3640376/fishtrap-lake/
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Huntington District. Fishtrap Lake Water Control Manual. Huntington, WV: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, n.d. https://water.usace.army.mil/cda/documents/wc/2241/FISHTRAP_WCM_REDACTED.pdf
United States. Flood Control Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1215, June 28, 1938. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-52/pdf/STATUTE-52-Pg1215.pdf
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Flood Control. Comprehensive Flood Control Plan for Ohio and Lower Mississippi Rivers: Letter from the President of the United States and Report of the Chief of Engineers. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1937. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001514806
Johnson, Lyndon B. “Remarks at the Dedication of Fishtrap Dam Near Pikeville, Kentucky.” October 26, 1968. The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-dedication-fishtrap-dam-near-pikeville-kentucky
United States. Water Resources Development Act of 1986. Public Law 99-662, sec. 862. November 17, 1986. https://www.usace.army.mil/Portals/2/docs/Value%20Engineering/PL%2099-662%2C%20Water%20Resources%20Development%20Act%20of%201986.pdf
United States. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 1990. Public Law 101-101. September 29, 1989. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-103/pdf/STATUTE-103-Pg641.pdf
Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers. “Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and Conduct Public Scoping Meetings for the Fishtrap Lake Road Project, Pike County, Kentucky.” Federal Register 71, no. 4 (January 6, 2006). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2006-01-06/pdf/06-101.pdf
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 1969 Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers on Civil Works Activities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969. https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16021coll6/id/1431/
Dunnell, Robert C. 1965 Excavations in the Fishtrap Reservoir, Pike County, Kentucky. Richmond, VA: National Park Service, Southeastern Region, 1966. https://core.tdar.org/document/175964/1965-excavations-in-the-fishtrap-reservoir-pike-county-kentucky
Dunnell, Robert C. The Prehistory of Fishtrap, Kentucky. New Haven: Department of Anthropology, Yale University, 1972. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102257401
National Park Service. “Notice of Intent to Repatriate Cultural Items: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Huntington District, Huntington, WV.” Federal Register 81, no. 232 (December 2, 2016). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28960/notice-of-intent-to-repatriate-cultural-items-us-army-corps-of-engineers-huntington-district
Curtis, William F., Russell F. Flint, and Frederick H. George. Fluvial Sediment Study of Fishtrap and Dewey Lakes Drainage Basins, Kentucky-Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 77-123. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1978. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/1977/0123/report.pdf
Davis, R. W. Data from Test Drilling to Trace Movement of Ground Water in Coal-Bearing Rocks near Fish Trap Lake in Pike County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 86-535. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1986. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr86535
Davis, R. W. Movement of Ground Water in Coal-Bearing Rocks near Fishtrap Lake in Pike County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 87-4084. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1987. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/wri874084
Taylor, Charles J. Summary and Interpretation of Dye-Tracer Tests to Investigate the Hydraulic Connection of Fractures at a Ridge-and-Valley-Wall Site, near Fishtrap Lake, Pike County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 94-4189. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1994. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/wri944189
United States v. Kentland-Elkhorn Coal Corporation, 353 F. Supp. 451 (E.D. Ky. 1973). https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/353/451/2344468/
Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Final Report of the Special Task Force on Fishtrap Lake. Research Memorandum No. 487. Frankfort, KY: Legislative Research Commission, 1999. https://legislature.ky.gov/LRC/Publications/Research%20Memoranda/rm487.pdf
Pollack, David, ed. The Archaeology of Kentucky: An Update. Vol. 1. Frankfort: Kentucky Heritage Council, 2008. https://heritage.ky.gov/Documents/TheArchaeologyofKYAnUpdateVol1.pdf
Pollack, David, ed. The Archaeology of Kentucky: An Update. Vol. 2. Frankfort: Kentucky Heritage Council, 2008. https://heritage.ky.gov/Documents/TheArchaeologyofKYAnUpdateVol2.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Groundwater Resources of Pike County, Kentucky: Additional Reading.” University of Kentucky, n.d. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/water/library/gwatlas/Pike/Additionalreading.htm
Pike County Historical Society. “Fishtrap Construction.” n.d. https://pikecountykyhistoricalsociety.com/fishtrap-construction/
Author Note: This article follows Fishtrap from federal authorization to the long aftermath of road changes, cemetery relocations, archaeology, and access debates. I wanted it grounded in Corps records, federal law, presidential remarks, and technical reports so the story stays as close to the documentary record as possible.