Iowa State University Lake LaVerne project dredges up history, items lost to time

Dredging of Lake LaVerne’s depths has revealed the Iowa State University lake’s role as a time capsule, hiding spot and trash can as university officials look to its future as a campus landmark.

Lake LaVerne is a human-made body of water that started as a dammed stream on ISU’s campus more than a century ago. It’s currently empty of water as crews work to restore it and add new features. While project planning has taken place for the last decade, the university has spent recent months draining the water and moving out the lake’s wildlife. A turtle-catching event was held to move the amphibians to a safer area for construction.

Workers began  dredging its bed in early June, according to Chris Strawhacker, campus planner for real estate and capital planning.

Neither Strawhacker or Facilities Construction Manager Claire Vorthmann came in with big assumptions about what could be unearthed, they said, but they definitely didn’t expect a cannon. The rusted, several-foot-long weapon was discovered June 25.

“They were really excited to reach out to us,” Vorthmann said of the restoration workers who found the cannon. “The manager of the company here said, ‘I’m not going to spoil the surprise, I want the operator himself to tell you what he found,’ so we were really excited and came by. You can tell that the folks out here are excited about what they find as well.”

Its origins are currently unknown, but Vorthmann said it might be the cannon used to celebrate touchdowns at football games before it was stolen from Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity in the early 1970s.

Other items dragged out of the lake with mud and sediment include a bowling ball — possibly from the bowling alley housed in the ISU Memorial Union nearby — as well as parts of bicycles and glass bottles from as far back as the 1940s and 50s, Vorthmann said. One glass was from ABC Brewing, which she said used to operate near Ames but is closed now.

Despite their size, Vorthmann said the excavation equipment can delicately extract items when operators spot them. So far, there is no formal plan as to what to do with everything they find. The team will also remove some obstacles, like rocks from the shoreline that students like to pry out and plop into the lake to see ripples or ice cracking.

Not all refuse that ends up in the lake was waiting for the restoration project. Strawhacker said an ISU professor brings a class out to the lake every fall to sample the water and collect specimens — including multiple bicycles every year.

The lake hasn’t been completely dredged since the 1950s, Strawhacker said, and sediment has been settling at the bottom throughout that time, filling in the lake to the point where its maximum depth had been cut in half from 12 feet to 6.

“The goal is to get close to the original planned depths, for a couple of reasons,” Strawhacker said. “One for habitat, for deeper pockets for the fish and animals to live in, but also to improve the water quality.”

Deeper water means a smaller chance of algae blooms developing in the lake, Strawhacker said, and it provides living spaces for fish and animals, but portions of the bed will be shallower to act as spawning beds. Once the project is complete, Lake LaVerne should have an average depth of 5 feet with areas as much as 13 feet deep.

Close to 500 truckloads of sediment have been pulled from the lake, Vorthmann said, and where original estimates placed the total number of loads at 1,000, she believes the trucks will probably carry closer to 1,200. Describing the lake as “a little bit mysterious,” she said the team isn’t sure what the actual number will be, or what else they might find during the dredging process.

Other aspects of the Lake LaVerne restoration project include reshaping its north shore for a new pathway and seating areas, which is in the process of being dug out, Strawhacker said, and west shore improvements to include a bridge and amphitheater, still in the design phase.

“We actually had a course do some work before we did the actual design, they did some surveys with students and found that most people really pass by the lake, they don’t sit and enjoy the lake that much,” Strawhacker said. “So the plan is to create these spaces where people can come and spend time and appreciate the lake.”

Once the project is complete, the lake will be restocked with fish and two new swans will call it their home. As for their hopes for Lake LaVerne’s future, Strawhacker said he’s interested to see how students and community members will want to engage with the spaces they will have created around it and make memories on campus they’ll carry forever.

An ISU alum herself, Vorthmann said she would have responded to the survey the same as many students, that she walked by the lake without ever really stopping to enjoy it. She said she’s excited to see the lake area used for more than just a path to the Memorial Union.

“It is almost like a little oasis on campus, where there’s water, there’s these very big old mature trees, some more wildlife,” Vorthmann said. “I just look forward to seeing that on campus, because it’s a unique feature.”