We invite you to share your thoughts, experiences,
wildlife sightings, and favorite memories of the
treasured Lake of the Lillies. . . Enter Here

I've lived by the Lake of the Lillies for more than 70 years and remember a beautiful, pristine lake covered with pond lillies. They had a wonderful fragrance that you could smell every morning from a block away. When I was 9 and 10 years old, I picked blackberries from around the lake and sold them to neighbors for 5 cents a quart to get my candy money. A friend of mine lived on the east side of the lake had a rowboat. His dad allowed us to make it into a sailboat with an oar between two nails to be the rudder. It was great fun for a couple of years until we ran it through the dock one day and his dad took the boat away from us. We caught several kinds of freshwater fish and lots of little one inch wide turtles that we kept from year to year. The middle of the lake was six feet deep and the shoreline was about two feet deep.

-Ed C.
08/11/2006

We'll Gain Strength

It's hard to watch it go so fast,
Seeing it disappear won't last.
I cannot stand our lake in harm,
Red-winged blackbirds sound an alarm.
We used to watch the turtles play,
Warming in the sun all day.
Swans fly in and take a drink,
Then they're gone in a blink.
Muskrats leave footprints ashore,
Do we have them anymore?
Many hearts are broke and torn,
The wildlife is rare and worn.
Through many days the lake has seen,
Pain and fears; the truth's come clean.

It's slowly losing hope,
Going down a bumpy slope,
We'll try and try,
And will succeed,
To get this lake back where we agreed.

-Lindsay, age 13
11/4/2006