Actually, it was held on March first, and to everybody's surprise that turned out to be the 52"a anniversary of the groundbreaking for Buford Dam, for it was on March 1, 1950, that several thousand people gathered in an open, cleared piece of land near Buford to turn the first spades of dirt and get the project underway for Buford Dam. Mayor William B. Hartsfield, of Atlanta, had been the driving force for building the dam, and the key to its approval in Washington had been Senator Richard Russell. Hartsfeld wanted it to assure Atlanta would have adequate water in the future, but a lot of people insisted there was no way Atlanta would ever run short of water. Anyway, there was no federal money for water supplies for local cities, so they had, in 1947, received approval for a multi-purpose dam for flood control, power production and navigation.
The idea of bringing barges up the river all the way to Atlanta galled some Georgians outside Atlanta, leading one South Georgia editor to say: "If Atlantans could suck as hard as they can blow, the ocean would already be there and they wouldn't need a dam." It's interesting ... we're still fussing about that navigation thing. Anyway, ground was broken for Buford Dam on March 1, 1950, and the floodgates were closed on February 1, 1956. And then we started trying to figure out
what we would call the Lake. You see, up to then, the only thing we had named was the dam.
This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/3/196880