Lake Hartwell is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoir on the upper Savannah River system at the Georgia-South Carolina line. Hartwell Dam sits below the meeting of the Tugaloo and Seneca rivers, and the completed reservoir reaches far up both river arms. Congress authorized the project in 1950, construction began in the 1950s, and the Corps built the dam and associated works as part of a larger Savannah River basin system.
Impoundment began in February 1961. Hartwell reached full power-pool elevation on March 12, 1962, and the first generator went into operation on April 27, 1962. The broader construction period continued into 1963. At full summer pool, the lake covers about 56,000 acres and has roughly 962 miles of shoreline, making the engineering project a massive recreational landscape as well as a working water-resource system.
Today the Corps manages Hartwell for multiple authorized purposes that include flood-risk reduction, hydropower, downstream navigation support, water supply, water quality, fish and wildlife management and recreation. That combination explains much of the modern lake: campgrounds and launch areas sit beside working hydropower and water-management infrastructure, while the reservoir supports major fisheries, boating and shoreline communities in six counties across two states.