Lake Mattamuskeet is the largest natural lake in North Carolina. It is a shallow coastal lake, averaging 2â€"3 ft (0.61â€"0.91 m) feet in depth, and stretches 18 miles (29 km) long and 7 miles (11 km) wide. Lake Mattamuskeet lies on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula.
Lake Mattamuskeet is the location of Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge as well as surrounding public and private lands in eastern North Carolina are a major wintering site for waterfowl including ducks like northern pintail and green-wing teal, geese like Canada geese and tundra swans.
Gallery
Secrets of Lake Mattamuskeet | NC Science Now | UNC-TV - Lake Mattamuskeet, NC's largest natural lake, is in trouble. Researchers want to understand why sea grass and fish are dying, algae is growing and water quality is deteriorating.
New Holland
New Holland is a community in Hyde County, North Carolina, located along the southern shore of Lake Mattamuskeet. Between 1911 and 1934, three private investment companies partnered with the public Mattamuskeet Drainage District to build the world's largest capacity pumping plant and dredge 130 miles (210Â km) of large navigable canals to drain 50,000-acre (200Â km2) Lake Mattamuskeet for residential, commercial, and agricultural development. The lake drainage project also gave badly needed drainage relief to about 550 farmers around the lake whose farms drained by gravity into the huge lakebed. The investors created a community within the reclaimed lakebed and named it "New Holland," after similar land reclamation projects in the Netherlands. The drainage project ended when the third private owner sold the lake property to the United States government in 1934 to allow the creation of a migratory bird refuge. Today, Lake Mattamuskeet and the old town site of New Holland are on Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. The community on the south central side of Lake Mattamuskeet is still called "New Holland Community."
References
External links
- The Mattamuskeet Foundation, Inc. - History of Lake Mattamuskeet
- The Mattamuskeet Foundation, Inc. - Wildlife of Lake Mattamuskeet
- Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge - North Carolina - FWS
- Lake Mattamuskeet, New Holland and Hyde County on the Open Library
