Kashagawigamog Lake is a lake in

Haliburton County Haliburton is a county of Ontario, Canada, known as a tourist and cottage area in Central Ontario for its scenery and for its resident artists. Minden Hills is the county seat. Haliburton County and the village of Haliburton are named after Tho ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. It is in the "cottage country" area of

central Ontario Central Ontario is a secondary region of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario that lies between Georgian Bay and the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The population of the region was 1,123,307 in 2016; however, this number does not in ...

and has many

cottages A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a Cotter (farmer), cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager ...

along its shores. It is the central lake in a five-lake chain running southwest from the town of Haliburton to as far as

Minden Minden () is a middle-sized town in the very north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, the greatest town between Bielefeld and Hanover. It is the capital of the district (''Kreis'') of Minden-Lübbecke, which is part of the region of Detm ...

. Connected to Grass Lake and Head Lake to the east, Soyers Lake to the north, and Canning Lake to the west, the lake is long and narrow. The lake is essentially a widening of the

Drag River The Drag River is a river in the municipalities of Minden Hills and Dysart et al in Haliburton County, Southern Ontario, Canada. It is in the Great Lakes Basin and is a right tributary of the Burnt River. Course The river begins at an unname ...

, which flows from

Drag Lake Drag Lake is a glacial lake in the township of Dysart et al in Haliburton County, Southern Ontario, Canada. The lake is in Great Lakes Basin, and its primary inflow, at the east, and outflow, at the west and controlled by a dam, is the Drag ...

into the chain of lakes at Head Lake and out again at Canning Lake where a dam is controlled by the Trent-Severn Waterway. Residents of Kashawigamog Lake are represented by the Lake Kashagawigamog Organization.

Name

The name Kashagawigamog is an

Anishnaabeg The Anishinaabeg (adjectival: Anishinaabe) are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples present in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. They include the Ojibwe (including Saulteaux and Oji-Cree), Odawa, Potawatomi, M ...

name meaning “lake of long and winding waters.”

Geography

The lake is in the

Great Lakes Basin The Great Lakes Basin consists of the Great Lakes and the surrounding lands of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the United States, and the province of Ontario in Canada, whose dir ...

with its primary inflow being from the Drag River and the primary outflow controlled by dams is the Burnt River. The lake consists of two basins connected by a narrow channel, the southwest basin being a little larger and wider than the northeast basin. Most of the shoreline is developed with cottages and resorts, but these are largely hidden from view by

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

and conifer trees that grow to the water’s edge. Granite bedrock surrounding the lake is typically covered by a thin layer of topsoil, with a few rock out-crops and sand beaches across the shore as well. There is one notable island known as Puffers Island, which is located in the southwest basin and supports four cottages.

History

The lake has served as an important passageway for First Nations peoples travelling to traditional hunting grounds and for early European settlers arriving to the lake in the late 1800s. It was chosen as a transportation route for lumber to be delivered south during the region's early lumbering years. Kashagawigamog Lake and adjoining Canning Lake were also the first waterway links between the villages of Minden and Haliburton before primary roads were completed in 1868. With the completion of the roads linking the area to

southern Ontario Southern Ontario is a primary region of the province of Ontario, Canada, the other primary region being Northern Ontario. It is the most densely populated and southernmost region in Canada. The exact northern boundary of Southern Ontario is disp ...

, Kashagawigamog became home to the oldest cottaging history in the county and the highest development.

Ecology

Watersheds Canada found in a 2015 survey that 74% of properties on Kashagawigamog Lake had submergent aquatic plants while 24% of properties had emergent vegetation which is an important source of habitat for the lake's fish and other aquatic organisms. Floating vegetation was found less frequently on Kashagawigamog Lake but is still an important part of the lake's aquatic ecosystem, giving habitat to the area's birds, frogs, dragonflies, and other wildlife. The most common types of nearshore habitat observed on Kashagawigamog Lake were terrestrial logs, followed overhanging vegetation. In the same survey it was found that there were invasive species present in the lake's ecosystem such as

Eurasian milfoil ''Myriophyllum spicatum'' (Eurasian watermilfoil or spiked water-milfoil) is native to Europe, Asia, and north Africa, but has a wide geographic and climatic distribution among some 57 countries, extending from northern Canada to South Africa. It ...

and

Purple loosestrife ''Lythrum salicaria'' or purple loosestrifeFlora of NW Europe''Lythrum salicaria'' is a flowering plant belonging to the family Lythraceae. It should not be confused with other plants sharing the name loosestrife that are members of the family P ...

References

{{Reflist, refs= Lake Kashagawigamog Organization. (2016, August 16). Lake Kashagawigamog. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.lko.ca/haliburton-highlands/lake-kashagawigamog/ Lake Kashagawigamog Organization. (2019, May 25). Membership. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.lko.ca/membership// Lake Kashagawigamog Organization. (2017, October 18). Lake Plan. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.lko.ca/about-the-lko/lake-plan/ Watersheds Canada. (2015, June). Kashagawigamog Lake Shoreline Assessment Summary Report. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.lko.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Kashagawigamog.pdf Lakes of Haliburton County

Name

Geography

History

Ecology

See also

References