Lake Okeechobee

Lake Okeechobee (US: /oʊkiˈtʃoʊbi/ oh-kee-CHOH-bee) is the largest freshwater lake in the U.S. state of Florida. It is the eighth-largest natural freshwater lake among the 50 states of the United States and the second-largest natural freshwater lake contained entirely within the contiguous 48 states, after Lake Michigan.

Okeechobee covers 730 square miles (1,900 km²) and is exceptionally shallow for a lake of its size, with an average depth of only 9 feet (2.7 metres). Not only is it the largest lake in Florida and the largest lake in the southeast United States, it is also too large to see across. The Kissimmee River, located directly north of Lake Okeechobee, is the lake's primary source. All of Lake Okeechobee was included in the boundaries of Palm Beach County when it was created in 1909. In 1963, the lake was divided among the five counties surrounding the lake: Glades, Okeechobee, Martin, Palm Beach and Hendry counties. All five counties meet at one point near the center of the lake.

While people may have entered the Kissimmee River valley during the Archaic period (8000–1000 BCE), occupation of the area around Lake Okeechobee probably began about 1000 BCE, when the Belle Glade culture, which lasted until about 1700 CE, appeared. The population in the Belle Glade culture area was sparse, with many sites apparently occupied by one or two families, but there are many large mounds and other earthworks in the culture area. European goods have been found in many archaeological sites in the Belle Glade culture area, but little is known of what happened to the people. The area was unoccupied by the time Seminoles settled in southern Florida.

In the 16th century, Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda reported a lake in the interior of southern Florida call Mayaimi, meaning "big water". Escalante Fontaneda also reported that several towns around the lake, including Mayaimi, Cutespa, Tauagemere, Tonsobe, and Enenpa, which were in the Belle Glade culture area, were subject to the Calusa that lived in the Caloosahatchee culture area on the southwest coast of Florida.

Slightly later in the 16th century, René Goulaine de Laudonnière reported hearing about a large freshwater lake in southern Florida called Serrope. By the 18th century the largely mythical lake was known to British mapmakers and chroniclers by the Spanish name Laguna de Espiritu Santo. In the early 19th century it was known as Mayacco Lake or Lake Mayaca after the Mayaca people, originally from the upper reaches of the St. Johns River, who moved near the lake in the early 18th century. The modern Port Mayaca on the east side of the lake preserves that name. The name Okeechobee comes from the Hitchiti (the ancestral language of most of the Seminoles in Florida) words oki (water) and chubi (big).

The Battle of Lake Okeechobee was fought on the northern shore of the lake in 1837 during the Seminole Wars. On the southern rim of Lake Okeechobee, three islands—Kreamer, Ritta, and Torey—were once settled by early pioneers. These settlements had a general store, post office, school, and town elections. Farming was the main vocation. The fertile land was challenging to farm because of the muddy muck. Over the first half of the twentieth century, farmers used agricultural tools—including tractors—to farm in the muck. By the 1960s, all of these settlements were abandoned.

In legislation passed in 1905 and 1907, the Florida Legislature created the Everglades Drainage District to lower the water level of Lake Okeechobee and drain the Everglades. Dredging of the New River Canal began in 1906. The North New River, Miami, Hillsboro, and West Palm Beach canals were completed by 1917. The drainage of the lake by those canals combined with a severe drought in 1917 to lower the lake's level until much of the lake bed was exposed, and muck fires burned much of the exposed peat.

Despite the drainage, the lake continued to periodically overflow onto the newly developed farmland near the lake. The Everglades Drainage District began construction of a 47-mile-long (76 km) levee around the southern side of the lake in 1921, from just north of Moore Haven to just south of Pahokee. The levee, built with mud, sand, clay, and shell, was 40 feet (12 m) wide at the base and rose to 21 feet (6.4 m) above sea level, which was lower than the highest recorded level for the lake. The levee was first breached in 1924. In September 1926 the lake water level was 19 feet (5.8 m) above sea level, just short of the levee's top. On September 26, the Great Miami Hurricane crossed the lake, collapsing the levee on the western side and killing approximately 300 people in the Moore Haven area.