Lake Meredith was built for drinking water. A. A. Meredith, Borger's city manager, pushed for a dam on the Canadian River, and the Bureau of Reclamation began Sanford Dam in March 1962 and finished it in 1965. Meredith died in 1963, two years before it was complete. The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority took the water by pipeline to eleven cities from Amarillo south to Lubbock and Lamesa, and the National Park Service has run the shores as a recreation area since 1965. It became Lake Meredith National Recreation Area in 1990, about 45,000 acres of federal land.
The lake has never been a steady thing. It stood 101.85 feet deep at its record high in April 1973. Through the drought years after 2000 it dropped and kept dropping; in 2003 the authority cut deliveries, by 2008 most of its water was coming from wells in Roberts County instead, in 2011 withdrawals from the lake stopped, and on August 7, 2013 it reached its lowest point, 26.14 feet. It has partly recovered, and ramps open or close with the level.
The setting is the river's breaks, canyons up to 200 feet deep, where the hard Alibates dolomite caps flat mesas above eroded slopes. The park ranks among the Park Service's top birding sites, with more than 230 species on its checklist, and painted buntings nest in McBride Canyon. There are eleven campgrounds, a swimming area at Spring Canyon below the dam, and trails such as Harbor Bay. The ancient flint quarries at Alibates are nearby in Potter County.
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