Lake Lanier Trivia

  • When 1" of rain has fallen on an area of 1 acre, 27,154 US gallons of water have been deposited. Seem like a lot of water?
    1 acre is 43,560 square feet.
    1 cubic foot holds 7.480550569 US gallons.
    43,560 square feet * (1 / 12) is 3630 cubic feet.
    3,630 cubic feet * 7.480550569 gallons per cubic foot is 27,154.39856 US gallons
  • When Lake Lanier is at summer full pool elevation (1070' MSL), it has an estimated surface area of 38,024 acres. This means after 1" of rain has fallen, 1,032,518,851 gallons of water have been deposited! And to help put this in perspective, 2 million gallons a day are drawn from the lake for fresh water just for the City of Buford. While this is less than 0.2%, consider just how many plants draw from Lanier (I don't know exactly how many, but it's more than 20), and how infrequently we have 1" of rainfall, and you start to appreciate the issues behind water management.
  • Although not officially open to the public in 1957, it is estimated that some 255,000 people first visited Lake Lanier. Over the years recreation has grown by leaps and bounds to nearly 7 million visitors annually.
  • Only 5 counties border the entire area of Lake Lanier: Hall, Forsyth, Gwinnett, Dawson, and Lumpkin.
  • The lake was named after 19th century poet Sidney Clopton Lanier. He was a Georgia native who was inspired by the beauty of this area to write the poem, "Song of the Chattahoochee." Music and nature influenced him as much as his admiration for Romantic poets such as Tennyson and Scott. In 1972 he was honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a commemorative 8-cent stamp for his contribution to literature. Read the song here.
  • The Chattahoochee River flows through Georgia's Piedmont and Coastal Plain, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico via Florida's Apalachicola Bay.

Most of the historical information comes from the Army Corp of Engineers.
They have an excellent web page (click here to go there).


Copyright © 1999, 2008 J. C. Wren, All Rights Reserved.
Homepage: www.tinymicros.com E-Mail: jcwren@jcwren.com
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