WATER & COAST
Lake Okeechobee
Glades County · South Florida & the Keys
The largest freshwater lake in Florida, 730 square miles across and only about nine feet deep.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Lake Okeechobee covers roughly 730 square miles, which makes it the largest freshwater lake in Florida, and it averages about nine feet deep, which is remarkably shallow for something that size. The name comes from the Hitchiti language spoken by the ancestors of the Seminole: oki for water and chubi for big. When Palm Beach County was created in 1909 it held the whole lake. In 1963 the lake was divided among the five counties around it, Glades, Okeechobee, Martin, Palm Beach and Hendry, and all five meet at one point in the middle of the water. Two hurricanes changed everything here. In 1926 the levee on the west side gave way and about 300 people died around Moore Haven. In 1928 at least 2,500 died. The Herbert Hoover Dike, forty feet high, was built afterward, and the Army Corps of Engineers finished an eighteen-year rehabilitation of it in January 2023 at a cost of 1.5 billion dollars. The lake is known for largemouth bass fishing, and the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail runs along the dike. Nutrient runoff from farming feeds algal blooms, which remains the hardest problem the lake has
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