North Atlanta, Then: When Lake Lanier Began to Fill

North Atlanta, Then is our Sunday look at local life through old photographs. We’re beginning with Lake Lanier—and inviting you to help fill the album.

A man in a dark hat stands at the water’s edge. Across from him, stone covers a broad embankment. Bare trees rise out of the water.

Lake Lanier is filling in this photograph from the 1950s. The man’s name and the exact date are not recorded with the online copy.

The change was enormous. On February 1, 1956, the intake gates at Buford Dam closed, beginning the slow filling of the reservoir on the Chattahoochee River. It took more than three years for the lake to reach its normal elevation of 1,070 feet for the first time, on May 25, 1959.

Making room for the lake meant moving people. The federal government acquired rights to more than 56,000 acres and relocated more than 700 families. Homes, barns and fences were removed as land was prepared for the reservoir.

For those families, the new shoreline marked places they had known on dry land. Their photographs could show a house, a farm or a stretch of road before the water rose.

Historical dates and relocation figures: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Buford Dam and Lake Sidney Lanier water control manual, chapter III. Photograph: Corps historical image shared by Natureman29, from the Buford Dam–Lake Lanier construction collection.

Share a piece of your North Atlanta

Have a photograph from growing up here—a school day, a family gathering, a neighborhood shop, a ball game, or an ordinary moment that means something to you? We’d love to see it. Photos from your parents’ or grandparents’ albums, and from more recent years, are welcome too.

Send a digital copy to info@northatlantastar.com with “North Atlanta, Then” in the subject line. Tell us where and roughly when it was taken, who is pictured if you know, and the story behind it. Include your name, town and the photographer’s name if known.

Please send only photographs you own the rights to or have permission to share for publication. Selected photographs and memories may appear in North Atlanta Star, with permission and credit.

More for your Sunday: Try our North Atlanta quiz, or read “After Twenty Years” by O. Henry.