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West Virginia’s Trout Pond, in Hardy County, was full in 2003 when the shot below was taken. Leakage out of what was until recently a blocked limestone sinkhole has reduced the pond to its current level, as seen above.
The three natural lakes of the region are endangered.
Well, “endangered” is not exactly true. Natural lakes have always been scarcer than partridge teeth in the southern mountains. “Lakes” in this region are overwhelmingly human-created reservoirs. Only three mountain lakes exist in the seven southern Appalachian states—and two have shrunk into ponds, while the third is hidden underground in a Tennessee cave.
West Virginia claims Trout Pond in Hardy County as its sole natural lake. The pond covers less than three acres of what has been discovered to be a blocked limestone sinkhole. Because of a shift in the rock bottom, Trout Pond has been shrinking between rains.
Native trout no longer swim in Trout Pond’s waters, although nearby manmade Rockcliff Lake is doing fine in the same Trout Pond Recreation Area of the George Washington & Jefferson National Forests. The larger, stream-fed lake is now the place folks go for swimming, boating, and fishing.
Southwest Virginia’s Mountain Lake, home of Mountain Lake Lodge, has also been pulling a disappearing act since 2008, leaving behind only cracked mud and a small pond. While the levels have been fluctuating for the past 13 years, the lake has never come back enough to make a paddling outing worthwhile for anything larger than a water bug.
Geologists theorize that the lake was formed by landslides filling a shallow gorge thousands of years ago. Landslides and shifting rocks, it turns out, make unreliable dams. They are pitted with gaps and holes that open and close without warning, allowing water to leach out.
At Mountain Lake—as with Trout Pond—when surface water is abundant, the water remains high, and the wet sediment layers keep the leaks in the rock bottom in check. But droughts can worsen the effect of the leaching, drying up the sediments and creating more holes. Often it’s cyclical. Although there’s no record of Trout Pond emptying in the past, geological records indicate Mountain Lake has ebbed and filled for thousands of years.
The southern mountains’ other natural lake, Lost Sea in Sweetwater, Tennessee, is holding its own—with its “disppearing” attribute being simply that it’s underground. In fact new layers have been discovered by cave divers. While measured in acres rather than miles, it is one of the world’s largest underground lakes.
The story above first appeared in our January/ February 2022 issue.
