Lake Buchanan is the second largest of central Texas’ Highland Lakes, and it was created in 1939 by the damming of the Colorado River. Located sixty miles northwest of Austin, the thirty mile long lake has 124 miles of shoreline that has been given over to campgrounds, rental cabins, and lakeside homes. Its gravel shores are ideal for swimming and sunbathing, and there is excellent fishing for striped bass.

It is a great lake for birdwatching, and visitors with a pair of binoculars can watch nesting bald eagles as well as the scissor-tailed flycatcher, great blue herons, great egrets, pelicans, cormorants, and roadrunners. Armadillos live in the area, as do opossums, bobcats, chameleons, deer, and foxes.

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