Silver Ridge Lake

From the air

Silver Ridge Lake was already built by 1955, about 25 years before the neighborhood's houses appeared. The 2026 aerial shows it drawn down to roughly 35 to 45 percent of its normal area.

First seen

Already full-size, with a raw-looking dam, in the 1955 aerial, the earliest usable photo (the 1940 and 1949 frames are blank).

Dam in the lidar

An earth dam at the south end, curved and running roughly east-west. It is about 36 feet high and 180 to 195 feet long, with a nearly level crest around 925.5 feet, about 4 feet above the water. There is no breach. A low notch at the east end, beside the road, is probably an uncontrolled spillway.

Low water and drawdowns

• 2026 (leaf-off county aerial, probably late winter or early spring; exact date unknown): The north edge of the pool pulled back about 180 feet and the pool narrowed on both sides. The northern third of the basin shows bare tan lakebed with a light channel line, and a brown mud rim shows near the dam. No breach or work at the dam is visible.

Read from aerial photos taken between 1940 and 2026 and from DeKalb County 2024 lidar, then checked by a second reading. How the photos were read.

Depth

Modeled from the shoreline shape and the dam inventory’s average depth: deepest point about 26 ft. Treat it as an estimate; no survey of the lake bottom was found. How depth is estimated.

History

Silver Ridge Lake is a small private impoundment in the Silver Ridge subdivision, in the Stone Mountain Creek watershed east of central Tucker. NID lists a 35-foot earth dam, 200 feet long, holding about 21 acre-feet of normal storage across 2 acres, with recreation as the purpose and no completion year. Georgia rates it Category II. The last inspection on file is November 1, 1996. I found no plat date, builder, club or news coverage. The most likely story is a subdivision amenity lake, but that is an inference, not a documented fact. 12345

Who built it

Not documented. The lake carries the name of the Silver Ridge subdivision, which points to a subdivision amenity, but no plat, developer or construction date was found. NID lists the designer as unknown and no completion year. NHDPlus tracing places it downstream of the Timber Trace lake and upstream of Kristina Lake on the Stone Mountain Creek system. 16745

Timeline

1. November 1, 1996Most recent inspection date recorded for the dam in the National Inventory of Dams (5-year cycle). 1
2. April 20, 2021NID record last updated; condition 'Not Rated', hazard Low. 1
3. June 4, 2025Georgia EPD's dam inventory lists Silver Ridge Lake Dam as Category II, 35 ft high with 28 acre-ft maximum storage. 28

Names

Silver Ridge Lake Dam

Official NID and Georgia EPD dam name (state ID 044-097-04206). 12

Silver Ridge

Subdivision name. It is a USGS GNIS populated-place entry about 0.2 km from the dam and an OpenStreetMap neighbourhood; the lake appears to be named after it. 74

The dam

Earth dam, 35 ft high (20 ft hydraulic height), 200 ft long, with 21 acre-ft normal and 28 acre-ft maximum storage. The spillway and outlet are uncontrolled. NID hazard is Low and condition 'Not Rated'; Georgia lists it as Category II. The last inspection on file is November 1, 1996 (5-year cycle), and the NID record was last updated April 20, 2021. The 101 sq mi drainage area in NID is implausible for this small creek and looks like a data error. Ownership is private. No rebuilds or contracts found. 128

Dam height

35 ft

Surface

2 acres

Average depth

about 10.5 ft

Owner type

Private

Figures from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams. Its “year” is often a rebuild or survey date, and average depth is storage divided by area.

Around the lake

Water

NHDPlus tracing puts the lake on the Stone Mountain Creek system, about 2 km (straight line) downstream of the Timber Trace lake and about 5 km upstream of Kristina Lake. USGS watershed data place it in the Stone Mountain Creek subwatershed (HUC-12 030701030306) of the Upper Yellow River, Upper Ocmulgee basin. The stream snap is approximate; treat the exact stream connection as likely.

Visiting

Getting there

Private (NID owner type 'Private'). No public access is documented.

What you can see

Nothing documented for visitors. The lake lies among houses on Silver Ridge Drive, so at most a view from a public street may exist. I could not confirm that.

Look, don’t dig. Parks, cemeteries and preserves are off limits to digging and collecting, and private land needs the owner’s permission to enter.

Open questions

• When was the Silver Ridge subdivision platted, and by whom? Was the lake part of that plat?
• Did the lake exist before the subdivision, for example as a farm pond?
• Is the lake on the main stem or a tributary of Stone Mountain Creek? NID lists the stream as 'Unknown'.
• The last inspection on file is from 1996; has the dam been inspected since?

Know something? Write to hello@historyunderfoot.org. Family papers, photos and deeds often settle these.

Where to look next

• DeKalb County plat books for the Silver Ridge subdivision (plat date, developer, lake lot) (DeKalb County Clerk of Superior Court, Real Estate Division)
• USGS Stone Mountain 7.5-minute quadrangle editions (1956, 1992, 1997) to date the lake's first map appearance (USGS TopoView / The National Map historical topo collection)
• 1930s-40s aerial photographs of DeKalb County for pre-subdivision land use (availability for DeKalb not verified; check UGA Libraries Map and Government Information and USGS EarthExplorer) (University of Georgia Libraries / USGS EarthExplorer)
• Georgia EPD Safe Dams file for state ID 044-097-04206 (open records request) (Georgia EPD Safe Dams Program)

Sources

1. National Inventory of Dams: records GA03912, GA03926, GA03929, GA03930 (national CSV download, data updated 2026-09-23) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
2. Georgia Dam Inventory, updated June 4, 2025 (Excel) Georgia EPD, Safe Dams Program
3. National Hydrography Dataset MapServer (waterbody and flowline layers) USGS
4. OpenStreetMap Nominatim geocoder (reverse and place search, incl. Stone Mountain Park outline) OpenStreetMap contributors
5. Watershed Boundary Dataset MapServer (HUC-8, HUC-10, HUC-12 layers) USGS
6. Network Linked Data Index (NHDPlus downstream navigation) USGS
7. Geographic Names Information System (geonames MapServer) USGS
8. Safe Dams Program (Category I/II definitions, regulation thresholds) Georgia EPD