Cagles Mill Lake
Cagles Mill Lake, also known as Cataract Lake or Cagle's Mill Reservoir or Lieber Reservoir, is a reservoir located near Cataract, Indiana, in Lieber State Recreation Area, in west central Indiana on the borders of Putnam and Owen counties.
It was Indiana's first flood control reservoir.
Cagles Mill Dam is a flood control project of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, an earthen dam that was dedicated on 1952-06-18 and completed in December 1953.
Its purpose was to alleviate flood damage in the valleys of the Eel, the White, and the Wabash rivers.
The Lake is alimented from the north by Mill Creek and drains out through Mill Creek, once more.
Mill Creek flows into Deer Creek which in turn flows into the Eel River to its south, which then makes its way to the White River.
Mill Creek is named for a grist mill, Cagle Mill, that used to operate downstream of where the Lake now is.
The mill itself was destroyed and rebuilt several times over the years, finally vanishing for good in 1975.
However, its low-level dam still exists.
Near to the site of the mill are the Hoosier Highlands, a recreational area created in 1924, whose name was suggested by Indiana poet William Herschel.
Dam and emergency spillway
The dam is a high and long earth and rock fill structure located roughly upstream of Mill Creek mouth.It impounds a maximum capacity of, and normal storage of.
Its maximum flood control area is.
The gaging station at Mill Creek near Manhattan is downstream from the mill and downstream from the reservoir proper.
It has a drainage area of with a datum elevation of above mean sea level.
The mean rate of discharge measured over the period 1938 to 1950 was.
The emergency spillway for the lake is located on the north west of the lake on the dam's left abutment, and is a restricted access area maintained by the USACE.
It is deep and over long, with a crest at above mean sea level.
Thus the lake has a maximum additional capacity of for temporary flood run-off water.
At the east end of the cut made for the spillway, Pleistocene rocks are exposed.
The cut is outwith the Wisconsinan glacial margin on a till plane.
It has been the subject of much study over the years, the exposed stratigraphy there proving useful to geologists for evidence of glaciation.
The dam project, performed under authority of the Flood Control Act 1938, cost, of which were non-federal funds for the construction of recreation facilities.
Ravines and Winona H. Welch botanical area
Any water flowing down the spillway flows into the St Genevieve Ravine, which has a small rill running down it.The ravine has woods on its westward side containing narrow-leaved spleenwort and Goldie fern.
Plants found here by Winona Hazel Welch include Asplenum pinnatifidum, Fontinalis novae-angliae var. latifola, and Pellia epiphylla.
The ravine used to be Hoosier Highlands property, but was no longer so by the end of the 1960s.
The next ravine to the west was named the Winona Welch Botanical Area.
It remained Hoosier Highlands property by the end of the 1960s, but at the time Welch explored the area both it and the St Genevieve Ravine were Hoosier Highlands property, and where her notes on the area refer to the Hoosier Highlands area they can be referring to either.
Roads and waterfalls
Indiana State Road 42 once went through where Cataract Lake is now and currently has a new, entirely different route on the upper area from its original route.Located on the lake are the state's largest waterfalls, the Cataract Falls. A main attraction to tourists on the lake is a bald eagle's nest, where the birds return every season.