Qualla: Powell Lake

Powell Lake: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Blake aka Webgeer at en.wikipedia, CC BY 2.0. At the bottom of Powell Lake there is seawater that has not touched the ocean since the last ice age. It lies in the deepest fifty metres of two of the lake's basins, too dense and too salty to mix with the fresh water above it, and it has been sitting there for roughly eleven thousand years. This was a fjord once, open to the Strait of Georgia. Then the land, released from the crushing weight of the glaciers, began to rise. The bedrock sill at the mouth came up out of the water like a lid closing, and what had been an arm of the Pacific became a lake with an ocean sealed inside it.

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Image: James Blake aka Webgeer at en.wikipedia | CC BY 2.0

Powell Lake: Fossil Water

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Buaidh, CC BY-SA 4.0. Scientists call a lake like this meromictic: one that never fully turns over. Most lakes mix top to bottom with the seasons, cold surface water sinking and stirring the whole column. Powell Lake cannot. The salt layer at the bottom is heavy enough to stay put permanently, and bec...

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Image: Buaidh | CC BY-SA 4.0

Powell Lake: Thaʔyɛɬ

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. In ʔayʔaǰuθəm, the language of the Tla'amin, the lake is θaʔyɛɬ - thaʔyɛɬ - which means, plainly and accurately, freshwater lake. The Tla'amin lived at the lake's outflow in a village called tiskʷat, and they were removed from it in the 1880s to make room for industry. The name n...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Powell Lake: The Lid and the Dam

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (WT-shared) Shaund, CC BY-SA 4.0. The same geology that trapped the salt water made the place irresistible to engineers. A low rise of land separates the lake from the Strait of Georgia, holding the water roughly forty-six metres above the tide - a natural dam requiring almost no improvement, with a very short ri...

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Image: (WT-shared) Shaund | CC BY-SA 4.0

Powell Lake: Goat Island and the Long Arms

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the water the lake still behaves exactly like the fjord it used to be. Steep forested walls climb straight from the shoreline, the basins bend out of sight from one another, and the whole thing runs deep into the Coast Mountains rather than sprawling across open ground. Goat...

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Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0