Lake Weohyakapka, Lake Wales: The 9,500-Year-Old Toolkit on the Lake Bottom

The largest collection of Paleoindian microlithic tools ever documented in Florida came out of the bottom of Lake Weohyakapka, near Nalcrest, on the western shore of the lake, east of Lake Wales. The tools are more than 9,500 years old.

Weohyakapka covers about 7,500 acres, the largest lake in Polk County, and runs around twelve feet at its deepest. The Creek-language name is usually translated as "walking on water," and the local English name, Walk-in-Water, comes from the same idea — a basin shallow enough that in lower-water years people could wade most of the way across it. The turpentine settlement that once stood on the shore went by Walinwa, the same name in shorter form.

During the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, when the Florida peninsula was wider and drier and the water table sat much lower than it does now, the Weohyakapka basin was likely a scatter of shallow ponds, marshes, and exposed flats around freshwater seeps. Tools left on those flats were covered by saturated sediment, which slowed weathering. As the water table rose the basin filled, and what had been left on those old shorelines went under and stayed there.

Microlithic tools are small — flakes, blades, and scrapers worked from chert, often less than an inch or two long, used for fine cutting, hide-working, and hafting into composite tools. A single one is easy to miss. An assemblage of this size in one lake indicates sustained occupation, people returning to the same place over generations.

Weohyakapka is also a trophy largemouth bass fishery. Thirteen-pound bass have come out of it. The fishery went through a stretch of overharvest before catch-and-release rules tightened it back up, and it now produces eight- to twelve-pound fish in numbers that keep the guide business going. Shallow water and heavy vegetation are what feed it.

The shoreline has stayed mostly undeveloped. Indian Lake Estates sits on the western edge, a 1955 development that never came close to its planned 15,000 residents. The Walk-in-the-Water tract of Lake Wales Ridge State Forest covers much of the rest — scrub habitat for Florida Scrub-Jays and bobwhites. The SUMICA tract, on the southern end, preserves the site of a logging town and sawmill. There is a public boat ramp and no marina.

The basin has never been dredged or channelized, and no causeway crosses it. The chert flakes are in the muck under twelve feet of water, on the western side of the lake near Nalcrest.