| Lake Lafayette | |
|---|---|
| Map of Upper Lake Lafayette, Lake Lafayette, Piney Z Lake and Alford Arm | |
| Location | Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida |
| Lake type | prairie lake, hypereutrophic |
| Catchment area | 79.6 sq mi (206 km2) |
| Basin countries | United States |
| Surface area | 2.85 sq mi (7.4 km2) |
Lake Lafayette is a prairie lake located in the coastal lowland in eastern Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida with US 27 / State Road 20 running close on its south side.
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Lake Lafayette is the remnant of a Pleistocene river delta.[1] Water levels receded in the last Ice Age and the coast moved farther south of the site which became a river valley and eventual a tributary of the St. Marks River. Dissolution processes culminated in the formation of a large basin, 8,925 acres (36.12 km2), a major sinkhole is located in Upper Lake Lafayette just South of the Cody Scarp.
Lake Lafayette Basin is one of the premier paleo sites in Florida. The lake area is surrounded by archaeological sites. Almost 40 Native American Mounds surround the lake. One of these mounds is displayed at the Florida Museum of Natural History. The large Midden Mounds on Lake Piney Z and the Temple Mounds at Fallschase are of special interest. Native American settlements are common in the Lafayette Basin and Hernando de Soto spent the first Christmas in the New World at one of these sites.
The early settlers of Leon County called Lake Lafayette 'Prairie Lake' as it looked much like a prairie during droughts. The lake took its name from the Lafayette land grant, the township (36-square-mile tract) on the north and east side of Tallahassee that was granted by the US Congress in 1824 to General Lafayette in gratitude for his military services in the American Revolutionary War.
In the late 1820s, portions of the Lafayette grant around the lake were sold and became plantations, each a few thousand acres in size. The Francis Eppes Plantation, Evergreen Hills Plantation and the Joseph Chaires Plantation grew cotton until the 1860s.
Lake Lafayette functioned as one hydrological unit until 1948 when the owners of Piney Z Plantation constructed two earthen dikes in the middle of the lake and turned the central part of Lake Lafayette into a farm pond. More dikes were constructed and the lake was further broken up creating Upper Lake Lafayette, Lake Lafayette, Piney Z Lake, and Lower Lake Lafayette which includes Alford Arm. This began the process which started the lake(s) to transform into a vegetated marsh.
The Lake Lafayette basin is the most intensively developed of the larger Lake basins in Leon County. This basin contains most of central and northern Tallahassee. It is the most modified major lake basin in North Florida and no longer functions naturally due to human occupation and altering of the lakes. Lafayette Basin once functioned as a temporary lake, much like Lake Miccosukee and Lake Iamonia where water was frequently exchanged between the Lake Basin, the Floridan Aquifer (sink holes) and the St. Marks River through a series of connecting sloughs.
Lower lake Lafayette is covered with floating islands of aquatic vegetation, called Tussocks, usually the root systems of decaying Fragrant Water Lily, an invasive species. These are colonized by aquatic grasses, sedges and even small trees which float around the lake driven by the winds. They can trap or crush boats, docks and piers.