The Lakes
Lake by lake — the one thing about each lake that most people don't know.
Saddle Creek at Structure P-11, Bartow: The Flow Record That Came Back
The USGS gauge below Lake Hancock published its last daily flow on October 7, 2014 and its next one on September 22, 2021 - and in between, the District had to calculate the lake's outflow instead of reading it
Nov 3, 2026
Middle Lake Hamilton, Polk County: The One Passing Grade Came From Four Wedges of Twelve
Middle Lake Hamilton's only passing biological score, a 46 on September 3, 2020, came from four of the lake's twelve LVI wedges - two of which scored below the failing line - and ten months later the same assessor walked a different four and got 27
Oct 28, 2026
Lake Lowery, Polk County: The County Owns Shoreline It Can't Reach
Polk County owns lakefront land on Lake Lowery, left over after flood buyouts cleared the houses off it - and in July 2014 the parks director told the county's own lakes committee that a public ramp there was impractical because the only way in is a private road.
Oct 23, 2026
Lake Juliana, Auburndale: The County Park Permit Polk's Own Planners Turned Down
On June 6, 2012 the Polk County Planning Commission voted 5-1 to deny Polk County's own permit for a boat ramp on Lake Juliana — by the parks department's account the first county park permit ever rejected — and the appeal that reversed it turned on who owned the bottom of the lake.
Oct 19, 2026
Lake Placid, Highlands County: The Lake Stayed Lake Childs Until 1954
Chapter 12990 renamed the town in 1927, but the water was officially Lake Childs until the U.S. Board on Geographic Names ruled otherwise in 1954 - and that decision did not reach printed maps until 1957
Oct 15, 2026
Lake Hancock Is Held a Foot and a Half Higher for the Peace River
The 1963 weir let Lake Hancock spill over its top at 98.7 feet; the structure that replaced it in 2013 holds the lake to 100, and the extra foot and a half is stored for a river between Bartow and Zolfo Springs
Oct 15, 2026
Lake May Holds Almost as Much Muck as Water
In November 2005 a crew pushed an aluminum pole into the bottom of Lake May at 167 places. Under 8 to 10 feet of water they found another 6 to 10 feet of muck — 302.4 acre-feet of it, against 316.0 acre-feet of lake.
Oct 12, 2026
The Legal Floor Under Lake Wailes Has Never Been Met, and the District Proposes Lowering It to 102.1 Feet
Lake Wailes has not met the minimum level the water district set for it in 2015, and the draft reevaluation going to the Governing Board on October 27 would replace 104.8 feet with 102.1
Oct 12, 2026
Lake Agnes, Polk City: The Shore Where Polk City Started
A Boston developer stopped to rest on the shore of Lake Agnes in the summer of 1922, and the town of Polk City grew from where he sat
Oct 8, 2026
Lake Placid, Highlands County: The Town Melvil Dewey Renamed
The librarian who invented the Dewey Decimal System renamed a whole Florida town to plant a winter branch of his New York club — and the town still carries the name he picked
Oct 8, 2026
Mountain Lake, Lake Wales: The Winter Home That Led to Bok Tower
Bok Tower sits on Iron Mountain because a Philadelphia magazine editor first bought a winter-home lot on the 92-acre private lake next door, and hired the lake colony's landscape architect
Oct 6, 2026
Lake Davenport, Davenport: The 1942 Motion That Cut the Lake in Two
In 1942 the Minutes of Davenport record a motion to tear down the failing West Boulevard bridge and fill the channel with sand, and Lake Davenport's northeastern arm has been a separate pond ever since
Oct 3, 2026
Lake Elbert, Winter Haven: The Hillside That Was Meant to Be America's Largest Modernist Neighborhood
Ten glass-walled houses opened on the grapefruit-grove crest above Lake Elbert's east shore in March 1957, and 10,000 people walked through them that first weekend — the opening installment of a modernist development that stopped at ten.
Oct 2, 2026
Lake Otis, Winter Haven: The Two Parking Spaces That Unlocked the Hydrilla Money
Homeowners on a private Winter Haven lake raised about $40,000 to kill their hydrilla and needed $90,000 — so they built a public boat ramp instead, because a state rule only funds weed control on water the public can launch on
Sep 29, 2026
Lake Gertrude, Mount Dora: Who Controls the Water
In 2008, a Lake County commissioner said scenic Lake Gertrude should be open to outside canoes and kayaks — and the homeowners around it pushed back over who actually controls the water
Sep 27, 2026
Lake Whistler, Auburndale: The Dam on This Shore Belongs to the Lake Next Door
A high-hazard state dam completed in 1965 stands on 75-acre Lake Whistler's northeast shore, and the federal inventory lists its reservoir at 764 acres — Lake Arietta's number, not Whistler's
Sep 27, 2026
North Prong Alafia River, Mulberry: The 154 Snook That Started the Repair
When 1997's acid spill came down Skinned Sapling Creek into the North Prong, the first act of repair on the Alafia was a release of exactly 154 juvenile snook
Sep 26, 2026
Lake Rosalie, Lake Wales: The 1947 Canal That Gave the Lake a Second Way Out
Water leaves Lake Rosalie in two directions at once, and the northern route — the Zipprer Canal that kayakers now paddle — was cut through a floodplain marsh in 1947 to drain it for cattle pasture
Sep 26, 2026
Lake Mattie, Auburndale: The Lake Florida Measures Other Lakes Against
Lake Mattie is one of the 71 lakes Florida uses as a reference for what a minimally disturbed lake looks like — and in 2019 the state's own update listed it at a Lake Vegetation Index score of 41 and asked whether it still qualified
Sep 24, 2026
Lake Walk-in-the-Water, Lake Wales: The Lake That Lost All Its Hydrilla and Had to Be Replanted
Three 2004 hurricanes pulled every bit of submersed vegetation out of Lake Walk-in-the-Water and no one ever sprayed a drop — by FWC's account the hydrilla has not come back, and biologists have spent the years since hand-planting natives in its place
Sep 23, 2026
Peace River, Fort Meade: The Thirteen Miles Where the River Drains Into the Ground
Between Bartow and Fort Meade the Peace River loses water into holes in its own bed — on one day in June 2002 the USGS measured about 32 million gallons going into the ground — and Fort Meade is where the leaking stops
Sep 22, 2026
Saddlebag Lake, Lake Wales: The Five Months of Pumping It Took to Get the Water Out
Saddlebag Lake is a closed basin with no outlet, so when it rose into 300 homes in 2005 the only way out was three pumps and two miles of pipe to Lake Rosalie — paid for by the residents at $30,000 a month
Sep 22, 2026
Lake Pierce, Lake Wales: The Five-Day Haul From Net to Railroad
Before it was a fish camp, the north shore of Lake Pierce was a commercial netting operation that hauled its catch out over log roads on a five-day round trip to the railroad — back when the lake was called Cat Fish Lake.
Sep 20, 2026
Lake Marion, Haines City: The Island House Built in the Shape of a Celtic Cross
In 1887 an Irish carpenter who had come south for his lungs started cutting cypress on a 23-acre island in Lake Marion, and built a house in the shape of a Celtic cross — his family has held the island ever since
Sep 20, 2026
Edward Medard Reservoir, Plant City: The Drawdown That Fed the Food Banks
When Hillsborough County's busiest reservoir was emptied in 2009 to rebuild its eroding bank, more than 1,300 of the stranded tilapia and catfish were filleted and sent to local food banks
Sep 18, 2026
Moon Lake, New Port Richey: The Foot and a Half That Doubles the Lake
Between 38.2 and 39.6 feet, Moon Lake grows from about 105 acres to 193 — the extra water standing in a 95-acre cypress swamp that a raised road cut off from the lake, and that now sets the lake's legal minimum level
Sep 17, 2026
Hardee Lakes, Bowling Green: The Lake That Stayed Closed Until the Fish Grew
Lake 3 at Hardee Lakes Park was stocked with sunshine bass in 2001 and then kept shut to anglers while they grew, and when it finally opened one Saturday morning in October 2005 all eight spots were already taken
Sep 17, 2026
Little Lake Harris, Howey-in-the-Hills: The Summer Nobody Could Get Off the Dock
In August 2018 hydrilla filled Little Lake Harris so thickly that people couldn't get a boat away from their own docks, and by November the state was treating 2,700 acres of a 2,744-acre lake
Sep 15, 2026
Lake John, Lakeland: The Lake a Dragline Left Behind
The 99-acre lake behind the ballfields at Curtis Peterson Park in Lakeland wasn't shaped by any river — it's water sitting in ground a phosphate dragline emptied out in the 1950s
Sep 15, 2026
Lake Jessie, Winter Haven: The 180-Acre Lake Where the World Learns to Land on Water
About 500 pilots a year earn their seaplane rating on a 180-acre lake beside the Winter Haven airport — more, by one industry count, than every other seaplane school in the United States combined
Sep 14, 2026
Lake Tracy, Haines City: The Ditch That Got Its Own Government
A drainage ditch that begins at the north end of Lake Tracy has had its own unit of Florida government since 1929, and it still assesses $50 an acre to keep the channel open
Sep 14, 2026
Lake Denton, Avon Park: The 51-Foot Hole Where Divers Certify
A shallow-state lake that drops to 51 feet with 30 to 40 feet of visibility became one of inland Florida's go-to lakes for learning to scuba dive
Sep 8, 2026
Lake Carlton, Tavares: One of Only Two Harris Chain Lakes That Can Be Drained
Carlton is one of only two lakes on the Harris Chain that can be drained on purpose — and when biologists did exactly that, the lake came back cleaner
Sep 8, 2026
Lake Conine, Winter Haven: The Wetland That Took Fifteen Years to Come Back
The 32 acres of wetland along Lake Conine's south shore spent 15 years and $3.7 million becoming a nature park — the slow, unglamorous work of turning drained ground back into a filter for the water
Sep 8, 2026
Seward Lake, Lakeland: A Week After Milton, the Water Was Still Rising
A week after Hurricane Milton, the water around Seward Lake was still rising — and the flood came so slowly that residents watched it reach their doors for days
Sep 8, 2026
Lake Bonny, Lakeland: The Nine Inches That Kept the Pumps Off
When Hurricane Milton pushed Lake Bonny into east Lakeland's neighborhoods in October 2024, the city couldn't legally start pumping until the water had already reached people's homes
Sep 8, 2026
Lake June-in-Winter, Lake Placid: The Bird That Lives Only on the Sand
On the sand of the Lake Wales Ridge above Lake June-in-Winter lives a bird found nowhere else on Earth — and the scrub it depends on only survives because fire keeps clearing it
Sep 8, 2026
Lake Griffin, Leesburg: The Drawdown That Brought the Bass Back
In the mid-1980s, biologists drained part of Lake Griffin on purpose — and the bass came back so hard the creel surveys still mark those years as the high water line
Sep 8, 2026
Lake Padgett, Land O' Lakes: The Sinkhole That Was Measured From the Inside
On July 14, 2017, a sinkhole opened in the Lake Padgett Estates subdivision, swallowed two homes and a boat, and grew to 260 feet across — and a USF researcher climbed in with a 3D scanner to study it
Sep 8, 2026
Lake Smart, Winter Haven: The Round Lake on the Ten-Lake Run
Lake Smart sits on a chain that crosses three cities and ten lakes, stitched together by canals that turned a scattering of round Polk County ponds into a single navigable system
Sep 8, 2026
Lake Eva, Haines City: Sixty Years of Piped Stormwater
For roughly sixty years the centerpiece of Haines City's signature park was fed the runoff of city streets — and it took a chemical pump and a state grant to start pulling it back
Sep 8, 2026
Edward Medard Reservoir, Plant City: The Mine That Became the Park
The 770-acre lake east of Brandon where a quarter-million people a year come to fish and camp was, in the 1960s, an open phosphate pit
Aug 10, 2026
Lake Osceola, Winter Park: The Boat Tour That Outlasted Everything Else in Orlando
The narrow canals between Winter Park's lakes were dug for Gilded Age homeowners — and in 1938 they became the route for an attraction that has run longer than anything else in greater Orlando
Jul 14, 2026
Moon Lake, New Port Richey: The Four Miles of Roses in the Pine Flats
In the 1930s a Clearwater hotel man ringed a Pasco County lake with 35,000 rose bushes and four miles of blooms, and drew Rex Beach and a Vanderbilt to a dude ranch in the pine flats
Jul 14, 2026
Hardee Lakes, Bowling Green: The County That Had No Lakes Until a Mine Made Four
Every one of Hardee County's four lakes was dug by a phosphate dragline in the 1990s — the county had no natural lakes at all until a worked-out mine was handed back as water
Jul 9, 2026
Little Lake Harris, Howey-in-the-Hills: The First Citrus Juice Plant in Florida
The first plant in Florida built to squeeze juice out of oranges stood on the west shore of Little Lake Harris — a 1921 idea that ran ahead of the equipment and the market built to handle it
Jun 25, 2026
Crews Lake, Spring Hill: The Lake That Drains Through Its Own Floor
The lake at the center of a 113-acre Pasco County park doesn't hold its water by accident — sinkholes drain it into the aquifer and groundwater pumping pulls it lower, which is why Crews Lake can come and go
Jun 15, 2026
Lake Istokpoga, Lake Placid: Three Feet of Water Across 28,000 Acres
Almost 28,000 acres of water that averages barely a meter deep — and a Seminole name that warns you exactly what that combination can do
Jun 10, 2026
Lake Alfred, Polk County: The Shoreline Where Florida Citrus Got Its Laboratory
In 1917, the state of Florida planted its first off-campus research center on the shore of this lake — and a century later, almost every commercial citrus tree in the state traces back to work done there
Jun 4, 2026
Rattlesnake Lake, Winter Haven: The $50,000 Name Change
A Winter Haven developer spent roughly $50,000 in legal fees to wipe the word "Rattlesnake" off the map and call the water Lake Ashton instead — and then started working on the actual Rattlesnake Lake next door
May 27, 2026
Lake Harris, Tavares: 36 Pounds in a Day
In January 2022, two brothers fishing a college tournament on Lake Harris brought a five-bass limit to the scales that weighed more than any single-day catch in the history of the Bassmaster College Series
May 25, 2026
Dinner Lake, Winter Haven: The 20-Acre Lake That Anchored a 199-House Subdivision
A 20-acre private lake in Winter Haven became the centerpiece of a 199-house gated subdivision platted in three phases — and most of the lots never touched the water
May 25, 2026
Lake Down, Windermere: The One Public Door Into the Butler Chain
The only public boat ramp on the entire Butler Chain of Lakes sits on Lake Down — and it almost didn't stay there
May 24, 2026
Lake Apopka, Apopka: The Winter the Restoration Killed the Birds
In the winter of 1998–99, the project meant to save Lake Apopka killed 676 birds — pelicans, wood storks, herons — poisoned by pesticides still locked in the soil decades after the muck farms shut down
May 24, 2026
Lake Van, Auburndale: The Dredging Case That Took Eight Years to Settle
A lawsuit filed in 1998 over illegal dredging and filling around Lake Van took eight years to settle — a slow reckoning over earth moved on a small Auburndale lake
May 24, 2026
Lake Minneola, Clermont: The Lake That Florida Tested First
In 2020, the clearest lake in the Clermont Chain became Florida's first test site for an Israeli-designed algicide — a $1.7 million experiment to see whether something nobody had tried here could knock cyanobacteria out of a protected lake
May 22, 2026
Lake Clinch, Frostproof: The Thirty-Foot Serpent and the Town That Kept Seeing It
For more than a century, people on the Frostproof shore have been reporting a thirty-foot serpent in Lake Clinch — and the tradition is older than the town itself
May 21, 2026
Lake Silver, Winter Haven: When the Ferris Wheel Turned Above the Shore
For a few weeks each winter in the 1940s and '50s, a double Ferris wheel turned above the shoreline and the lake sat at the center of a national broadcast
May 20, 2026
Tiger Lake, Frostproof: The Small Polk Lake That Drains to Two Oceans
A 2,086-acre lake in southern Polk County quietly feeds the same water system that empties into Lake Okeechobee — and from there, to both coasts
May 19, 2026
Crooked Lake, Babson Park: The Lake That a Collapsing Ridge Carved
The shape that gave Crooked Lake its name isn't a quirk of mapping, it's the visible signature of multiple sinkholes that opened beneath the Lake Wales Ridge over the last 5,000 to 10,000 years
May 18, 2026
Lake Idylwild, Winter Haven: The Garden Attraction Time Forgot
Before the ranch houses and the police training center, a 1940s garden attraction called Idylwyld Gardens drew visitors to this round little lake on Winter Haven's northwest chain
May 18, 2026
Lake Hamilton, Polk County: The Island Village and the President Who Came to Fish
A Seminole chief's village on Bonar's Island, and a former president casting a line from the same shoreline seventy-some years later
May 17, 2026
Lake Hollingsworth, Lakeland: The Three-Mile Loop That Made a National List
A 354-acre lake in central Lakeland ended up on a national top-20 list of running routes — and the reasons it earned that spot are baked into the shoreline itself
May 16, 2026
Lake Morton, Lakeland: The Swans Came From the Queen
The swans gliding around a downtown Lakeland lake trace their lineage to a 1957 gift from Queen Elizabeth II — a transatlantic rescue of a flock the city had nearly lost
May 15, 2026
Lake Weohyakapka, Lake Wales: The 9,500-Year-Old Toolkit on the Lake Bottom
The largest cache of Paleoindian microlithic tools ever recovered in Florida came up out of the bottom of this shallow Polk County bass lake
May 10, 2026
Lake Parker, Lakeland: The Runoff That Stopped Going Straight In
The story of how Lakeland's largest lake — sitting in the shadow of a power plant for most of a century — became measurably cleaner water
May 8, 2026
Lake Hatchineha, Kenansville: The Big Lake You Could Almost Walk Across
A 6,665-acre lake that averages three feet deep tells you almost everything about how the Kissimmee Chain actually works
May 7, 2026
Lake Louisa, Clermont: The Mustang on the Bottom
In 2001, drought pulled the water down far enough to show the tail of a P-51 Mustang that had been resting on the bottom of Lake Louisa since November 1944
May 6, 2026
East Lake Tohopekaliga, St. Cloud: The Lake That Grew Florida's First Sugar Mill
Before St. Cloud was a town, the south shore of East Lake Tohopekaliga held the first sugar factory ever built in Florida
May 5, 2026
Lake Mirror, Lakeland: The Locked Door on the Promenade
A locked gate on Lakeland's most photographed promenade hides a chamber that locals have spent nearly a century inventing stories about — alligator dens, lion pits, and a secret tunnel under the lake to the Terrace Hotel
May 5, 2026
Scott Lake, Lakeland: The Day the Lake Drained Into the Ground
In June 2006, a sinkhole opened beneath Scott Lake and drained all 251 acres of it into the Floridan Aquifer — and then, slowly, the lake came back
May 2, 2026
Lake Cannon, Winter Haven: The Bloom That May Have Been a Florida First
In the spring of 2001, four people riding jet skis across Lake Cannon picked up rashes that may have made Florida history — and not the kind anyone wanted
May 1, 2026
Lake Gibson, Lakeland: The 7,000-Foot Water Runway in the Middle of a Suburb
The 490-acre bass lake in North Lakeland is also a registered airfield with a 7,000-foot runway — and most people who drive past it every day have no idea
Apr 30, 2026
Lake Tohopekaliga, Kissimmee: The 1987 Drawdown That Uncovered the Spawning Flats
In the 1980s, biologists tried something on Lake Toho that had never been attempted on a lake its size — scraping the muck off the bottom to bring it back
Apr 27, 2026
Lake Tibet, Windermere: The 438 Acres on the Southwest Shore That Stayed Wetland
On Lake Tibet, one of the most coveted stretches of waterfront in Orange County nearly became a neighborhood — instead it became a preserve
Apr 25, 2026
Lake Dora, Mount Dora: The Chain's Worst Toxic Algae Reading, and the Order That Followed
In 2001, the prettiest lake on the Harris Chain quietly held a title nobody wanted — Florida's most polluted water body
Apr 25, 2026
Lake Eloise, Winter Haven: Where Performance Water Skiing Began
Dick Pope turned Lake Eloise into the most photographed lake in America
Apr 25, 2026
Lake Lulu, Winter Haven: The 1966 Park That Opened the Chain
Before Winter Haven had a public park on its chain of lakes, it had to build one — and the lake they chose was Lulu
Apr 25, 2026
Lake Beauclair, Tavares: The Lake That Carries a Founder's Borrowed Name
The man who founded Tavares gave Lake Beauclair its name — and he gave Tavares its name, too, and both names trace back to the same restless, self-invented life
Apr 25, 2026
Lake Arietta, Auburndale: The Street Named for What the Loggers Left
The street name on your waterfront lot is older than anything built there. Here's what Lighter Log Lane actually remembers — and what happened to the forest that gave it its name.
Apr 19, 2026
Bill Dance Fished Your Lakes — The Bass History Behind Polk County's Waterfront
The chain of lakes outside your window has been on national television for over fifty years. Here's the history behind the water you're looking at every day.
Apr 19, 2026
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