It was built in 1959 to expand the water supply for Lake Stanley Draper in Oklahoma City and Atoka.

[2] The lake has a surface area of 5,700 acres (23,000,000 m2),[3] an average depth of 26 meters (26 m), 70 miles (110 km) of shoreline and a capacity of 105,195 acre-feet (129,756,000 m3).

[a] Atoka Lake is mentioned along with Sardis Lake, the Kiamichi Basin and the Clear Boggy Basin in a current court case (now known as Chickasaw v. Fallin), alleging that the state has violated the water rights of specific Native American tribes.

The case was filed in 2011, and seeks to prevent of limit withdrawals of water from the named sources by the city of Oklahoma City and approved by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.

[6] This Oklahoma state location article is a stub.