Half Moon Lake EarthCache
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Half Moon Lake is nestled in beautiful Eau Claire WI.
Difficulty is 1/1, the cache is intended to be a park n' cache.
Difficulty is 2/2 if you walk the route.
The first time I visited Carson Park, I thought I was on an island. I consider Carson Park one of the premier city owned parks I have ever seen...
Description:
Half Moon Lake is a small, shallow hyper-eutrophic lake that formed as an oxbow of the Chippewa River in the city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It is 132 acres in size and has a maximum depth of 9 feet.
History:
Half Moon Lake and Dells Pond provided storage space for multiple logging operations during the early 1800’s. It’s believed that Eau Claire had the largest number of sawmills in any one community in the world during the mid 1800’s. Eau Claire was nicknamed the “Saw Dust City” because of the numerous sawmills located in and around the town.
Geography Lesson:
An oxbow lake is formed when a river creates a meander, due to the river's eroding the banks through hydraulic action and abrasion/corrosion. After a long period of time, the meander becomes very curved, and eventually the neck of the meander will touch the opposite side and the river will cut through the neck, cutting off the meander to form the oxbow lake.
When a river reaches a low-lying plain, often in its final course to the sea or a lake, it meanders widely. In the vicinity of a river bend, deposition occurs on the convex bank (the bank with the smaller radius). In contrast, both lateral erosion and undercutting occur on the cut bank or concave bank (the bank with the greater radius.) Continuous deposition on the convex bank and erosion of the concave bank of a meandering river cause the formation of a very pronounced meander with two concave banks getting closer. The narrow neck of land between the two neighboring concave banks is finally cut through, either by lateral erosion of the two concave banks or by the strong currents of a flood. When this happens, a new straighter river channel is created and an abandoned meander loop, called a cut-off, is formed. When deposition finally seals off the cut-off from the river channel, an oxbow lake is formed. This process can occur over a time scale from a few years to several decades and may sometimes become essentially static.
Half Moon Lake was cut off from the Chippewa River in the 1800s.
To log this EarthCahe, please email the following questions (mandatory) and please a photograph of Half Moon Lake (optional)
1. What is the approximate width of the lake?
2. How does the width of the lake compare to the neighboring Chippewa River (The river is easy accessible to the south of Half Moon Lake)?
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Congratulations to Nolron, FTF 11/18/10!
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Additional Hints
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