Just in time for the extended Fourth of July holiday weekend, a popular beach at Grenada Lake will reopen as visitors prepare to take a dip in one of Mississippi’s largest lake.
Main Beach – located off Scenic Route 333 near Grenada Landing – will open Thursday, July 1, after recent heavy rains forced its closure. Thousands of visitors and tourists are expected at the lake this weekend and, according to officials, extra efforts have been made to ensure that Main Beach reopened in time.
Liz Garlington, supervisory natural resource specialist at Grenada Lake, said crews have made the necessary adjustments over recent days to open Main Beach.
“We were able to adjust buoy lines at Main Beach to make them usable,” Garlington said. “We are asking that visitors wear their life jackets in this designated area.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had previously closed Main Beach due to high water from the heavy rainfall earlier this month.
Garlington added that the Fourth of July is the second busiest weekend at Grenada Lake behind Memorial Day Weekend.
“This week, almost all of our picnic shelters are booked and we expect a lot of people on the lake throughout the weekend,” she said.
To release lake water, gates at the dam were raised to five feet, but Garlington said that the water level remains high.
“We are still over the 226-feet mark, so we are urging boaters to take extreme caution,” Garlington concluded. “We’re expecting a large boating crowd and we’re asking them to watch for underwater obstacles.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, the long stretch of Scenic Route 333 over the dam remained closed as 24-hour flood surveillance continues. Motorists are being rerouted down Tow Road all the way to the North Abutment Campgrounds.
