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🏕️Recreational

Enid Lake

Part ofOxford & the North Hills

A Corps of Engineers lake on the Yocona River, finished in 1952 after farm families were moved off the valley floor, and the home water of a world-record white crappie.

⏱
Duration
One to three hours.
🎟
Admission
No entry fee is listed for the dam area; camping and some day-use sites charge fees (Corps of Engineers).
📅
Best Season
Year round for fishing; crappie fishing is best in spring. The lake is lower in fall and winter.

The Story

The Yocona valley was Chickasaw and Choctaw country until the treaties of 1830 and 1832, and by the 1940s it was farmland. Construction of Enid Dam began on 1 February 1947 as part of the Yazoo headwater flood-control system that also produced Sardis, Arkabutla and Grenada lakes. Families on farms in the Yocona bottom, some on land held for generations, had to move, and roads, bridges and utilities were rebuilt around the project.

The Corps put the dam into operation in December 1952, at a total cost of about $15 million. The earth dam is about 8,400 feet long and 110 feet high. At conservation pool the lake covers 6,100 acres with 65 miles of shoreline; at spillway crest it reaches more than 18 miles up the valley. The emergency spillway has run in 1973, 1983, 1991 and 2002.

Most of the lake lies in Yalobusha County, with parts in Panola and Lafayette. It holds the world record for white crappie, 5 pounds 3 ounces, caught in 1957, and the North Mississippi Fish Hatchery sits below the dam. The project covers about 44,000 acres, with camping, boat ramps and picnic areas.

Visitor Info

⏱
Time Needed
One to three hours.
🎟
Admission
No entry fee is listed for the dam area; camping and some day-use sites charge fees (Corps of Engineers).
📅
Best Season
Year round for fishing; crappie fishing is best in spring. The lake is lower in fall and winter.
🛣️
Highway
I-55

On the Map

Nearby

The closest stops worth working into your route

natural13 mi away
Holly Springs National Forest
A patchwork national forest of about 155,000 acres in the north Mississippi hills, assembled in the 1930s from worn-out cotton fields and replanted in pine by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
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Casey Jones Railroad Museum
The old Illinois Central depot in Water Valley, where Casey Jones worked in the 1890s, with a Mississippi Blues Trail marker for the songs written about his death in 1900.
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Sardis Lake and Dam
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Grenada Freedom Movement Marker
The Mississippi Freedom Trail marker at Line and Green streets for the 1966 Grenada movement, when Black children entering white schools were beaten by a mob and 13 white men were arrested.
historical26 mi away
The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi
The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.
historical26 mi away
Rowan Oak
William Faulkner's Greek Revival house in Oxford, bought in 1930 and kept by the University of Mississippi, with the outline of A Fable still written on his study wall.