Lake Worth Lagoon

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The Lake Worth Lagoon is a lagoon located in Palm Beach County, Florida, at coordinates 26°40′53″N, 80°02′45″W. It is approximately 21 miles long and up to a mile wide. It runs parallel to the coast, and is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by barrier beaches, including Palm Beach Island. The lagoon is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by two permanent inlets. The Lake Worth Inlet is 800 feet wide by 35 feet deep; the South Lake Worth Inlet (also known as the Boynton Inlet) is 130 feet wide by 6 to 12 feet deep. The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway runs the entire length of the lagoon. Eight causeways and bridges connect the mainland to the barrier beaches, including Palm Beach Island.

In the mid-19th century the body of water that is now the Lake Worth Lagoon was a fresh water lake. The lake had been named Lake Worth in honor of William J. Worth, commander of the Eighth Infantry Regiment in the Second Seminole War. There were no rivers or streams flowing into the lake; all of the flow into the lake was by ground seepage from the Everglades to the west. The only outflow from the lake was through a swamp that became the Lake Worth Creek as it approached the Loxahatchee River and Jupiter Inlet. Extreme high tides and waves, high lake water levels and storms occasionally caused the formation of temporary inlets that quickly closed up again. When there was no inlet available, the settlers in the area had to haul their boats over the barrier beaches to move them between the ocean and the lake.

In 1866 travelers reported that fresh water was pouring out of the lake into the ocean at a point about ten miles south of the Jupiter Inlet. One report is that a settler named Lang had dug the channel to open an inlet, and it was known as Lang's Inlet for a while. This cut drained the lake down to sea level. The limited inflow of ocean water through the inlet and continued seepage of fresh water from the Everglades kept the lake from becoming more than mildly brackish. Lang's Inlet was unstable, and had to be dug out again every few months. Construction of a stable inlet at the Black Rocks one mile north of Lang's Inlet was finally achieved in 1877. The lake immediately began to change to a saltwater lagoon. The completion of a navigation canal from the north end of Lake Worth Lagoon to Jupiter Inlet in the 1880s resulted in increased freshwater discharges to the lagoon.

In the early 1900s, the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway was completed from the south end of the Lagoon to Biscayne Bay. By 1915, the Port of Palm Beach created a permanent inlet four feet deep at the old location of Lang's Inlet, which was deepened to 16 feet in 1925. In 1917 the South Lake Worth Inlet was created in a failed effort to improve tidal circulation and provide flushing to the south end of the Lagoon. The completion of the West Palm Beach Canal (which connected to Lake Okeechobee, draining land west of West Palm Beach as well as the Everglades) in 1925 resulted in significant freshwater inflow to the lagoon.

Lake Worth Lagoon is completely surrounded by the urbanized area of Palm Beach County. Approximately 65 percent of the shoreline is bulkheaded; only 19 percent of the shoreline remains fringed by mangroves. As a result of the many canals draining into it, the lagoon is adversely affected by wide variations in salinity levels caused by occasional large volume freshwater releases. Since 1994, there has been heightened awareness of the need for water quality improvements and habitat restoration and enhancement within the Lagoon. A Lake Worth Lagoon Management Plan was approved in 1998 to guide the Lagoon’s restoration and enhancement.