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Lewis Smith Lake (or Smith Lake) is located in North-Central Alabama about 20 miles northwest of Birmingham in state of Alabama counties of Cullman, Walker and Winston. The 300-foot high dam, completed in 1961 by Alabama Power Company, impounds the Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior River to form the lake. Smith Lake has a surface area of 21,200 acres, 500 miles of shoreline, a watershed area of 944 square miles, a retention time of 435 days, and a maximum depth of 264 feet. The western side of the lake's watershed is crowned by the 180,000-acre Bankhead National Forest, which blankets the deeply dissected southern edge of the Cumberland Plateau. The Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior River, Alabama's only Wild and Scenic River, flows through the Bankhead National Forest. The Sipsey Wilderness, Land of a Thousand Waterfalls, lies within the Bankhead National Forest and is home to Alabama's largest tree, a tulip poplar with a 21-foot circumference at its base.