[1] Serving principally as a flood-control reservoir, Lake Travis' historical minimum to maximum water height change is nearly 100 feet.

[3] With 30 square miles of surface area, Lake Travis has the largest storage capacity of the seven reservoirs known as the Highland Lakes, and stretches 65 miles (105 km) upriver from western Travis County (near Lago Vista, Texas) in a highly serpentine course into southern Burnet County to Max Starcke Dam, southwest of the town of Marble Falls.

The reservoir was formed in 1942 by the construction of Mansfield Dam on the western edge of Austin, Texas by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), and was built specifically to contain floodwaters in a flash-flood prone region.

During its construction, after a severe flood in July 1938, the height of the dam was raised to add storage capacity for floodwaters.

[12] Lake Travis is well known for its outdoor recreation opportunities, including fishing, boating, swimming, scuba diving, picnicking, camping, and zip lining.

[18] The level of the lake can vary dramatically—with an over 96-foot range between its historical high and low—depending on the amount of rainfall in the Colorado River basin upstream.

[21] The LCRA, a public utility whose responsibilities include the management of Lake Travis, makes water level reports available on the internet.

Ideally, this is done in a time-delayed fashion after a major rainfall so as to either mitigate or outright prevent downstream flooding which otherwise would have been both immediate and extreme without the dam's presence.