Lake Dunlap
A narrow, 410-acre Guadalupe River lake between New Braunfels and Seguin whose dam catastrophically failed on a calm May morning in 2019, drained completely within 24 hours, and was fully rebuilt for $40 million by October 2023 -- a genuinely current story every buyer should understand.
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A sunset ski run, the rebuilt dam at full pool, a bass caught near the bridge pilings -- submit a photo and we'll feature it here.
Submit a Photo →The Lake at a Glance
Lake Dunlap is a narrow, run-of-the-river reservoir on the Guadalupe River, impounded by the TP-1 Dam originally built in 1927-1928 by the Texas Power Corporation, one of six hydroelectric dams in a chain acquired by the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority on May 1, 1963. At roughly 410 acres and just 40 feet at its deepest point near the dam, it's dramatically smaller and narrower than the large flood-control reservoirs covered elsewhere on this site.
The single most important fact for any buyer: on May 14, 2019, at 8:05 AM, one of the dam's two spillgates catastrophically failed on a clear, calm morning with no storm or flood event involved, a genuine "sunny day failure" caused by decades of aging structural steel. The lake drained essentially completely within about 24 hours, leaving lakefront wells dry and lake-dependent businesses facing closure.
Because GBRA has no legal taxing authority, funding the roughly $40 million rebuild required a genuinely novel solution: Guadalupe and Comal county voters approved a new Lake Dunlap Water Control and Improvement District in November 2020, which combined property taxes with 100 percent of the dam's hydroelectric revenue to bond out construction. Zachry Construction completed the new hydraulic crest gates by August 2023, and the lake was fully refilled to normal pool by October 26, 2023.
What Buyers Need to Know First
Lake Dunlap is, as of today, fully restored and operating normally, one of only three lakes in this six-lake chain to reach that status. Lake Wood, Lake Gonzales, and Meadow Lake remain drained with no secured funding as of this writing, making Dunlap's successful rebuild a genuinely important comparison point when evaluating any property on this stretch of the Guadalupe.
The second piece is cost: Lake Dunlap WCID's tax rate runs a genuinely low 20 cents per $100 of valuation, dramatically lower than neighboring Lake McQueeney WCID or Lake Placid WCID, because Dunlap's rate is subsidized by the dam's own hydroelectric revenue, a real and checkable cost advantage for buyers comparing across this lake chain.
The third piece is scale and character. This is a narrow, calm, ski-and-wakeboard-friendly lake, not a big-water reservoir, sitting genuinely close to both New Braunfels and Seguin, with new master-planned subdivisions like Legacy at Lake Dunlap now building nearby even though they sit set back from the actual shoreline.
Everything We Cover on Lake Dunlap
Independent research across every topic Lake Dunlap buyers ask about -- the WCID tax structure, the dam's rebuild story, and how this restored lake compares to its still-drained neighbors.
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