Free Tennessee River Lake Vector Files. SVG, PDF, EPS, DXF, GeoJSON, Shapefile, High-Res PNG.
A growing collection of free, public-domain vector files for the major reservoirs in the Tennessee River system. Same files for each lake we cover: SVG, PDF, EPS, DXF for CAD, KML for Google Earth, Shapefile and GeoPackage for GIS, plus high-resolution PNG in every reasonable color combination. No attribution required. No signup. No watermark. No paywall.
What you get for each lake
Every lake page hosts the same set of files: full and simplified SVG, PDF, EPS, DXF for CAD and laser cutting, GeoJSON, TopoJSON, KML/KMZ for Google Earth, Shapefile and GeoPackage for GIS, plus high-resolution PNG (1024 / 2048 / 4096 / 8192 px wide), WebP, AVIF, and JPEG. Each lake also ships in ten color and style variants: filled brand color, solid black silhouette on transparent, white silhouette on transparent, outline only, black on white, white on black, black outline on white, white outline on black, teal on white, and Tennessee Orange on white.
Why is this free?
The lake-outline geometry comes from OpenStreetMap, which is itself built from public-domain US Geological Survey hydrography. There’s nothing creative or proprietary about the shape of a real reservoir. We do the work of fetching it, projecting it correctly through Tennessee State Plane (Lambert Conformal Conic) so the lake doesn’t look stretched at this latitude, styling it, rasterizing it, and bundling it for every reasonable use. Then we hand it back to you under CC0.
The reason Etsy is full of these is that the actual work, knowing where to find OpenStreetMap data, knowing what a State Plane projection is, knowing which command-line tool turns a polygon into a DXF, is annoying enough that most people give up and pay $12. The Etsy seller didn’t survey the lake. They didn’t hike the shoreline with a GPS. They downloaded the same OpenStreetMap polygon anyone can pull, ran it through Illustrator, and listed it. It is the same file. They’re selling convenience to people who don’t know the data is free. We do know. So we’re removing the convenience tax.
Tell your friends
If you found this useful, the only thing we’d ask is that you tell somebody. Share this directory. Link to watts.bar/free-lake-vectors/. Every link helps the next person searching for a free lake vector land on the free version instead of a paid one.
Don’t see your lake?
If you want a Tennessee Valley Authority or US Army Corps of Engineers reservoir we don’t cover yet, drop us a note. The hardest part is curating the right OpenStreetMap relation; everything after that is automated. We’ll add it.