Pungo Lake is a freshwater lake in Washington County and Hyde County, North Carolina. The lake has an area of about 2,800 acres, and is one of the five largest freshwater lakes in the state. It is the smallest of the pocosin lakes. Pungo Lake is a black water lake, with no submerged vegetation due to the fact that sunlight can not penetrate its waters. The lake is believed to have formed after a ground fire burned

peat Peat (), also known as turf (), is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem covers and is the most efficien ...

deposits, creating a large depression which filled with rainwater. It is named for the

Machapunga The Machapunga are a small Algonquian language-speaking Native American tribe from coastal northeastern North Carolina. They were part of the Secotan people. They were a group from the Powhatan Confederacy who migrated from present-day Virginia ...

people. There were attempts to drain the lake in the 1840s and 1850s, and it was connected to

Pungo River The Pungo River is a river in eastern North Carolina, United States. It originally began in the Great Dismal Swamp in Washington County, North Carolina; the upper part of the river has since been supplanted by the Pungo River Canal, dug in the 19 ...

via canal, but there have never been any major settlements around it. The soil surrounding the lake is too

-rich to be used for agriculture. The lake is a part of the Pungo unit of the

Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge The Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is located in North Carolina's Inner Banks on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula in Hyde, Tyrrell, and Washington Counties, North Carolina. Its headquarters is located in Columbia. Pocosin Lakes NWR was ...

. The lake became a national wildlife refuge in the 1960s, and additional land was included in the refuge in the 1990s. It is a refuge for many migratory bird species, including

snow geese The snow goose (''Anser caerulescens'') is a species of goose native to North America. Both white and dark morphs exist, the latter often known as blue goose. Its name derives from the typically white plumage. The species was previously placed ...

tundra swans The tundra swan (''Cygnus columbianus'') is a small swan of the Holarctic. The two taxa within it are usually regarded as conspecific, but are also sometimes split into two species: Bewick's swan (''Cygnus bewickii'') of the Palaearctic and the ...

. marsh birds, wood ducks, owls, and hawks. Other species that inhabit the Pungo Lake area include red wolves, white-tailed deer, otters, bobcats, and alligators.

References

External links

https://www.fws.gov/refuge/pocosin-lakes {{coord, 35, 42, 51, N, 76, 33, 03, W, type:waterbody_region:US-NC, display=title Lakes of North Carolina Bodies of water of Hyde County, North Carolina