[7][8] In 1981, Governor Lamar Alexander ordered the dam across Brown's Creek closed during a ceremony at the construction site.

[10][8] By September of that year, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission reached an agreement to name it after Graham, who was at that time a member of the commission and was initially against the renaming to avoid appearances of favoritism until they agreed to name the road leading to the lake after Sen. Lowell Thomas, another supporter of the project, and the renaming received the support of a number of state senators and representatives.

By late 1982, the projects had been revised to on-or-about January 1, 1983, but significant rain in early December 1982 caused a rapid rise in the lake's levels.

In 1989, the TWRA began the process of lowering the water levels in the lake to concentrate the prey species to allow for predation by other fish, such as bass and catfish.

[12] These efforts were only partly successful, though, and later the TWRA was forced to conduct a large scale fish kill to bring populations under control.