Lyman Lakes
From CarlWiki
Lyman Lakes are two small lakes on campus. (They are not to be confused with Lyman Lake at the foot of Lyman Glacier in Glacier Park Wilderness in the state of Washington.) They separate Goodhue, the Rec Center and the frisbee fields from the rest of campus. The lakes comprise approximately 8 acres of surface area on the lower Spring Creek watershed.
Lyman Memorial Lakes date from 1916-1917 and were the gift of Trustee and Mrs. George R. Lyman of Minneapolis in memory of their son, George Huntington Lyman. Originally the college maintained swimming beaches on both lakes and skating and hockey facilities on the upper lake.
The lakes were designed by Morrell and Nichols Landscape Architects. Construction began in the fall of 1916. Employees of a Duluth dredging company worked 24 hours a day digging the lake beds and damming Spring Creek. The project cost about four times the original estimates. The islands (Mai Fete Island and Stewsie Island) were created from the soil dredged up.
Although the lakes were once valuable from a recreational standpoint (swimming, fishing, etc.), siltation problems caused them to fall into disrepair. The high sediment load of Spring Creek was dropped into the lakebeds for more than 80 years, and increased fertilizer use on upstream farms and lawns encouraged huge algae growth. This, in turn, caused the water to become stagnant and smelly. In 1992, to alleviate the smell and avoid the problem of the sediment in the upper lake, the dam was opened to create what was termed the "Shallow Lake Ecosystem Project," which some students took to calling a "ShLEP." This had the effect of turning the upper lake into a marsh with Spring Creek winding through the middle. In 2000, the college dredged the lakes to depths of 10 feet (upper lake) and 15 feet (lower lake). A settling system was installed and the shores of the islands were stabilized at that time.
In the summer of 2009, the lower lake was once again drained in order to restore the islands, which had lost considerable land mass to erosion since 2000.
The presence of the lakes is valuable to the college as a recruiting and development tool. Attractive photographs of the lakes are often found in official college literature.
Accidents
On June 3, 1926, just before finals were to begin, two students, Marjorie Veach '27 and Philip Gray '28 drowned in the lower lake. A canoe capsized drowning Veach, one of the four occupants. Gray, an onlooker, drowned as well while attempting to aid the canoeists. John Nason '26, who later became Carleton's fifth president, was also among those who attempted to help and is credited with finding Veach's body.
