The Little Tallahatchie runs through country that was Chickasaw and Choctaw land until the treaties of 1830 and 1832. After the Great Flood of 1927 Congress authorized dams on the northern tributaries of the Yazoo to hold back spring runoff and protect the farmland downstream. Sardis Dam was the first federal flood-control project on the Yazoo headwaters.
Construction began in the mid-1930s with close to 1,000 workers clearing about fourteen miles of river bottom with mules, hand tools and saws. The Corps of Engineers raised the earth dam by dredging soil from the river below it and pumping it uphill; the dredge was named Pontotoc. The dam went into operation in October 1940, 15,300 feet long and averaging 97 feet high, and for many years it was the largest earth-filled dam in the world. The dredging left the 425-acre Lower Lake below the dam.
The Corps draws the lake down every fall and winter, from about 32,500 acres at recreation pool to 9,800 at conservation pool, so shorelines change with the season. The spillway has run only in 1973, 1983 and 1991. John W. Kyle State Park lies near the Lower Lake, and the Corps keeps a visitor center with exhibits on the dam's history.
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