![Wakefield Bandstand in the Summer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Wakefield_Bandstand_in_the_Summer.jpg)
Lake Quannapowitt is a lake in
Wakefield
Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...
,
. It is one of two large lakes in Wakefield, the other being the man-made Crystal Lake. The lake is named for
Quonopohit, the
Naumkeag
Naumkeag is the former country estate of noted New York City lawyer Joseph Hodges Choate and Caroline Dutcher Sterling Choate, located at 5 Prospect Hill Road, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The estate's centerpiece is a 44-room, Shingle Style ...
Native American who signed a deed to the town that would become Wakefield in 1686. Given its easily accessible location off Route 128 in Middlesex County, Lake Quannapowitt is a popular setting for walkers, joggers, bikers, and in-line skaters. It is the site of many organized races from
5Ks to
ultramarathon
An ultramarathon, also called ultra distance or ultra running, is any footrace longer than the traditional marathon length of . Various distances are raced competitively, from the shortest common ultramarathon of to over . 50k and 100k are bot ...
s. Since 1992, Friends of Lake Quannapowitt (FOLQ) has operated as an organization working to fulfill its goal of promoting public awareness and providing long-term protection and enhancement of Lake Quannapowitt and its environs. Large amounts of tar were found in the lake some years ago. The lake is emptied by the
Saugus River
The Saugus River is a river in Massachusetts.
The river is long, drains a watershed of approximately , and passes through Wakefield, Lynnfield, Saugus, and Lynn as it meanders east and south from its source in Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield ...
.
Lake Quannapowitt (''KWAN-ah-POW-it / KWAN-
ə-POW-it''), which was originally known as Reading Pond, has numerous nicknames today. Some area natives refer to the lake as "Lake Quannapolluted" due to their view of the state of health of the lake, but the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection handled only one isolated open case of contamination from the electric company that was remediated in 2008. The two former beaches remain closed to swimming, due to arsenic which was introduced into the lake in the early 1960s to handle aquatic weeds.
![Wakefield common 2011](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Wakefield_common_2011.jpg)
The
town common
Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel.
A person who has a ...
of Wakefield abuts the southeastern shore of the lake. A well-known scene in the town is of its iconic bandstand on the town common, with Lake Quannapowitt in the background.
The lake has active populations of warm-water species of fish.
References
External links
Friends of Lake Quannapowittofficial website
at VisitingNewEngland.com
An overview of a 2006 ultramarathon around the Lake archived at the
Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...
See also
*
Wakefield, Massachusetts
Wakefield is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, incorporated in 1812 and located about north-northwest of Downtown Boston. Wakefield's population was 27,090 at the 2020 census. Wakefield offers ...
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Quannapowitt
Wakefield, Massachusetts
Quannapowitt