Lake Lyndon B. Johnson and Llano County runs down the center of the lake. The lake was originally called Lake Granite Shoals. The dam would be renamed Wirtz Dam in 1952 for Alvin J. Wirtz, the first general counsel of the LCRA, and the lake was renamed to Lake Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 in honor of US President Lyndon Baines Johnson. In addition to his work to enact the Rural Electrification Act that formed the basis for building the Texas Highland Lakes, President Johnson owned a ranch on the lake (which was separate and apart from the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, Texas). He
Lyndon B. Johnson mission, his roommate and his crew's B-26 bomber was shot down with none of the eight men surviving the crash into the water. Reports vary on what happened to the B-26 bomber carrying Johnson during that mission. Johnson's biographer Robert Caro accepts Johnson's account and supports it with testimony from the aircrew concerned: the aircraft was attacked, disabling one engine and it turned back before reaching its objective, though remaining under heavy fire. Others claim that it turned back because of generator trouble before reaching the objective and before encountering enemy aircraft and never came under fire. This is supported