![]() Soon afterward, a wooden hotel and a saw mill were built. to provide accommodations and entertainment for its visitors. Salt Pond had been frequented throughout the early part of the 19th century and prior, then in March, 1856, Henley Chapman incorporated the Mountain Lake Co. Photo of the north facade of the main building of the Mountain Lake Lodge in October 2013. The lake drains into Little Stoney Creek, which passes over a spectacular waterfall known as The Cascades before reaching the New River.ĭuring a severe cold wave in January 1985, Mountain Lake set the statewide record low for Virginia: −30 ☏ (−34 ☌). Ĭlose to the lake is one of Virginia's few virgin forests, including a rare virgin spruce bog-Mann's Bog-with an unusual array of northern disjunct species. The lake is now believed to reach its lowest points on a roughly 400-year cycle. During dry periods, accumulated sediment is believed to move through a natural plumbing system consisting of the aforementioned openings in the lake bottom. ![]() During the lake's most recent dry period, researchers had examined the area's geology and concluded that the lake existed on a natural rise-and-fall cycle. However, resort employees noticed that the lake had begun to refill during a wet spring of 2020, and the lake had refilled to about a third full by July 14th. In 2006, it dropped again, and emptied completely for several days, leaving behind dead and rotting fish. It first dropped in 1999, and returned to its normal levels in 2003. The lake's water levels had fluctuated dramatically over the previous 20 years. From 2008 to 2020, Mountain Lake was nothing more than a reddish-brown pit, only partially filled with water. The last such level fluctuations occurred between 17 as historical accounts give widely different accounts of the lake size. Since 2002 it has been subject to dry-season level drops of as much as 15 feet (4.6 m). It is more than 100 feet (30 m) deep when full. Because of narrow channels and openings in the lake bottom, the level has a history of changing dramatically depending on the water flow through these channels. Cold underground springs feed the lake and rarely allow the temperature to rise above 70 ☏ (21 ☌) on the surface and 46 ☏ (8 ☌) fifty feet (15 m) below the surface. The lake is estimated to be about 6,000 years old, and geologists believe it must have been formed by rock slides and damming. Replenishment of the water lost depends on rain levels, and apparent washing-out of sediment from the fissured bedrock bottom is causing the unstable lake levels. ![]() Recent scientific studies indicate that an unusual combination of natural processes created the lake, which is maintained by a fissure at the bottom that provides an outlet for both sediment and water and prevents the lake from otherwise simply becoming a bog. But the basis on which this lake-the only natural one in the southern Appalachians-exists has been the source of much speculation. Natural lakes are common well to the north, where the Appalachian Range was subject to geologically recent glacial activity. It subsequently became known as Salt Pond. The first known written evidence of the lake was by Christopher Gist of the Ohio Land Surveying Company, in 1751. Mountain Lake typically covers about 50 acres (200,000 m 2), and its level was largely constant at an elevation of 3,875 feet (1,181 m) during the 19th and 20th centuries. The area is within the Mountain Lake Wilderness Cluster. It was originally known as Salt Pond, as it was where cattle were given salt. Along with Lake Drummond in the Great Dismal Swamp, it is one of only two natural lakes in Virginia. Mountain Lake is a freshwater lake located in Giles County near Newport, Virginia in the United States.
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