THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
RUBLISHERCQUARTERLY BY THE 
iL, SAMINTOM ES 7G UID AU OMNIS SSO Ooi) ise pan 6 
200IN NORTH CEARK. STREET, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
Number 32 December, 1939 
The History of Annihilated Beaver Lake 
By 8. E. PERKINS III 
Fellow of the Indiana Academy of Science 
THE HISTORY of the physiographic and faunal changes of a part of 
northern Indiana is so replete with fascinating happenings that I 
would share the story of it. 
In the remote past, geological evidence shows that a very large 
body of water covered most of what is now Newton and Jasper Coun- 
ties, from the Kankakee River as far as Kentland, south of the Iro- 
quois River. It was known as Lake Kankakee and disappeared through 
natural causes thousands of years ago. 
Beaver Lake, the largest body of water within the confines of 
the State of Indiana in modern times, is now also a thing of the past. 
Lake Wawasee, formerly known as Turkey Lake, the present largest 
lake, amounted to little more than a pond before 1828, when a dam 
was placed by settlers, and has acquired its present size of five and a 
half by one and a half miles only through a series of succeeding dams. 
Few people now living are aware that before 1849 in Barker 
Township, Jasper County, as it was laid out in the early days of the 
state, there was a natural water area seven miles by five miles in extent, 
a placid lake of 16,000 acres six miles south of the Kankakee River; 
that it was muck-bottomed and quite shallow, with the exception of a 
narrow twelve-foot channel through it; that reeds, grasses and pond 
lilies grew in most of this primitive water area; that a dozen ‘oak 
openings” called “islands” thrived there; that wildlife concentrated 
at that lake in greatest profusion—thousands of pristinely white 
Swans, ducks and geese by myriads, along with cranes and herons of 
many kinds; that dozens of these varieties of birds bred thereabouts; 
that this sheet of water was known as Beaver Lake. Its location was 
between the present towns of Morocco and Lake Village, both non- 
existent in 1849 but recorded as settled in 1859. A dike road (U. S. 
No. 41) today runs north and south between these towns and is only 
a couple of feet above the former bed of the lake. Two ditches carry- 
ing a small amount of water through the old lake bed are bridged 
by this roadway and all the rest is dry. 
We are dealing with facts recited by individuals who have been 
on the ground or had the stories from those who visited there. 
