The construction of Buford Dam and the creation of Lake Sidney Lanier required the acquisition of more than 50,000 acres of land. Â The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke ground on the project in 1950 and the lake was dedicated in 1957.
Those 41 words don’t begin to tell the history of one of America’s most popular recreation sites.  To learn the entire history of Lake Sidney Lanier and Buford Dam you would have to read the work of an historian and view hundreds of old photographs and discover what was said about this massive work that took most of a decade to accomplish.
Thankfully, Robert David Coughlin compiled the resource, “Lake Sidney Lanier — A Storybook Site — The Early History and Construction of Buford Dam”, published in 1998.
In 2016, he revised this expansive work and offered a “pre-publication” sale.
In 1946 Army Engineers surveyed a narrow river valley at the boundary of Gwinnett and Forsyth Counties.  Colonel Mason J. Young, then South Atlantic Division Chief for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, looked out over the open expanse … [and said] “This is a storybook site for a dam … I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better site for a dam.”
The book details the history of Lake Lanier using over 700 historical and contemporary photographs, official documents and letters, newspaper articles, maps, interviews and more.”
