Celebrating Monroe Lake’s 60th Anniversary Series of events and programs planned for lead-up to October reception

When I hit 60, I realized I couldn’t fake it anymore. I was no longer young, no longer even middle aged. Sixty is when people start thinking, seriously, about retirement. Sixty means you’re nearer the end than the beginning.

Sixty is old.

View of Monroe Lake from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Office & Overlook, near the dam. The lake took almost a year to fill in and was dedicated on October 24, 1964. | Limestone Post

Lake Monroe turns 60 this year.

The human-made reservoir ten miles south of Bloomington, the source of our drinking water, a destination for many outdoor activities, and home to a wide variety of critters and flora, was dedicated on October 24, 1964. All the justifications for creating it have been satisfied. We couldn’t imagine living in these parts without the presence of this body of water in our collective backyard.

Sixty years is but the blink of an eye in geological terms. Lake Michigan, for instance, on our state’s northwest border, began coming into being some 1.2 billion years ago when two tectonic plates started to split apart. The rift they formed filled in with water after the last of the Ice Ages, some 14,000 years ago.

Compared to it, Monroe Lake is a fresh-faced kid.

Yet when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was planning its construction in the early 1960s, the agency calculated a 100-year lifespan for it.

Should we start writing Monroe Lake’s eulogy now? Is it old?

“Yes and no,” says Jill Vance, Monroe Lake’s full-time interpretive naturalist and a history buff. “To say they have designed a lifespan into it is a little bit disingenuous.”

Vance is coordinating a months-long series of events celebrating Monroe Lake’s 60th anniversary. She has tied together the fetes sponsored by more than a dozen organizations and entities who benefit from the reservoir and advocate for its health. See a list of events below, and a complete list can be found on the website for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and on the lake’s Facebook page.

Planners did a cost-benefit analysis when trying to decide whether to go ahead with the dam-and-reservoir project or not. “Does the reservoir make sense to build, the construction costs, the operation costs, and everything else versus the benefits that we’re going to get,” Vance explains. All those factors and more were projected over a 100-year period.

Interpretive Naturalist Jill Vance organizes popular events on and around Monroe Lake year-round. Above, she rings in the new year and the start of the First Day Trail Run and Walk, held each New Year’s Day at Fairfax SRA. | Limestone Post

“That doesn’t mean the reservoir is going to be gone,” Vance says. “Once you get to that point, it’s the cherry on top, it’s all a bonus.” That “lifespan” only means the lake’s century-worth of benefits justified its cost.

Vance and I are sitting at a picnic table outside Monroe Lake’s Activity Center at Paynetown State Recreation Area (SRA). Before we even begin talking about the schedule of 60th anniversary events, Vance schools me on proper terminology.

Talk to anybody around town, read the newspaper or local magazines, listen to radio and TV reports, and all references to this sinuous, 25-mile-long pool of water call it Lake Monroe.

“Can I make a correction here?” Vance says. “Our property’s name is actually Monroe Lake.”

She’s serious about this. In two previous stories about the lake, we at the Limestone Post decided to refer to it as Lake Monroe, because that’s what everybody does. “As long as the media keeps printing it wrong,” Vance says, “that’s going to keep being more popular than its actual name!”

Okay, here goes: The USACE, creator and owner of the pool formed by damming Salt Creek, officially calls it Monroe Reservoir. The Indiana DNR’s State Parks Division, which manages the water and the area surrounding its shoreline, calls its property Monroe Lake.

“The more people I can train,” Vance says, “maybe we’ll get it right.” She extracts a promise from me to call it Monroe Lake.

Bass, catfish, and crappie are among the lake’s residents. Above, a fisherman poses with his catch near Fourwinds Lakeside Marina. | Limestone Post

Vance has been on the job at Monroe Lake — see? we’re trained! — since September 2011. When she came aboard, the Activity Center at Paynetown, her headquarters, was a wreck.

“Flooding welcomed me to Monroe Lake,” Vance says. “The May 2011 flood was our record peak: 19.1 feet above normal pool that year. This was all under water at that point. Water sat in the building for a couple of months. Basically, everything inside was destroyed. My first job when I came here was cleaning out the building, getting everything thrown out, and figuring out how we’re going to start over.”

In a way, that record flooding turned out to be a boon for Vance. She was excited to be named Monroe Lake’s first full-time interpretive naturalist but, she adds, “to also have the opportunity to redesign my building was a really neat opportunity.”

Vance has designed a comprehensive, year-round program of hikes, tours, lectures, classes, interactive activities, and more, as well as an indoor display area featuring the animal and vegetable species in and around the lake. And now she’s the go-to person for the lake’s birthday bashes.

The celebrations started in July with the Hoosier National Forest’s Beach Party at Hardin Ridge Recreation Area and the Lake Monroe Water Fund’s Beach Bash at at the Fourwinds Lakeside Inn at Fairfax SRA. The 12-week span from August through October 24 features an almost daily slate of events.

On August 1, Vance’s office released an online, self-guided tour of the sites of the covered bridges that once criss-crossed Salt Creek before the area was filled in with water. Boaters can visit the sites, read about their histories, and see images of the bygone bridges.

The activity center will hold two astronomy-oriented events, the first on August 10, a Telescope and Meteor Watching party at Paynetown, scheduled to coincide with the Perseid meteor shower. On September 17, when the moon will be partially obscured by an eclipse, there’ll be a Moon Watch party at Fairfax SRA.

A slate of events through October 24 is set for people to commemorate and enjoy the lake, including kayak tours like this one sponsored last year by The Friends of Lake Monroe. | Limestone Post

The Friends of Lake Monroe will sponsor several shoreline cleanup parties, a kayak tour, a pontoon tour, and, on two separate dates, four tours of the City of Bloomington Utilities water treatment plant.

Two watercraft rental companies will offer discounts throughout the month of August to mark the lake’s 60th.

Smokey Bear’s 80th birthday happens to be in August, so the Hoosier National Forest has tied that in with the lake’s anniversary for a celebration at 4 p.m., August 31, at Hardin Ridge campground near Heltonville. A recreation interpreter will discuss wildfire prevention, the history of Smokey Bear, and the “Only You” campaign.

There’ll be a Sunset by the Water Painting Workshop at Fairfax on September 8.

A number of hikes, sponsored variously by the Friends of Lake Monroe, The Sierra Club, Sycamore Land Trust, and Vance’s office, are scheduled, as well as the Bloomington Bicycle Club’s annual Tour de Ramps invitational race on September 14.

The Lake Monroe Day Celebration Featuring Busman’s Holiday will be held at Woolery Mill on September 15.

The 60th celebration culminates with the USACE’s reception October 24 at the agency’s local office at the Monroe Lake Overlook.

All the events highlight the wide variety of species and features on, in, and around the reservoir. “Oh, my goodness!” Vance exclaims when asked what wildlife calls Monroe Lake home. “The one we’re absolutely known for is the bald eagle.

“We have the distinction, the honor, of having been the location where bald eagles were re-introduced to the state of Indiana. Starting in 1985, we brought in baby eagles from Wisconsin and Alaska and over the course of five years put around seventy-five of them in a special tower that was built for them in the north fork part of our property. That was such a success story for us. We have about fourteen active nests here on Monroe Lake every spring.”

Among the creatures that live and forage around Monroe Lake are eagles, ospreys, hawks, woodpeckers, songbirds, deer, coyotes, weasels, fox, squirrels, rabbits, bobcats, turtles, and other reptiles such as this skink. | Limestone Post

Monroe Lake is also home to ospreys, hawks, woodpeckers, and songbirds. Additionally, deer, coyotes, weasels, fox, squirrels, rabbits, bobcats, turtles, reptiles, and other amphibians all live and forage around the lake.

Bass, catfish, and crappie swim in the lake. “We are one of the top destinations for bass fishermen in the state,” Vance says. “We have lots of bass fishing tournaments.”

An amateur historian, Vance loves delving into the history of the area now under water. To that end, she’s leading a series of multiple programs and events for Salt Creek Valley History Week, September 15–21. On September 29, she’ll lead the Stillwater Levee Walk in the Northfork Waterfowl Resting Area on Kent Road.

“A lot of people come to the lake for water recreation and the boat ramps and they have no idea we have this huge wildlife program on the north end of our property,” Vance says. “It’s really beautiful back there. I love taking people back and sharing that part of our property with them.”

Monroe Lake is alive and reasonably well as it enters its seventh decade. But, like a lot of sexagenarians, it gets a bit creaky at times and has its aches and pains. Blue-red algae buildup and farmland silt runoff continue to be problems. With each passing year, more silt amasses at the bottom of the lake.

“If you let the silt keep on building up, you’re going to see impacts from that,” Vance says. “We do see it in some of our upstream areas, like Crooked Creek SRA. The last couple of summers as we got into the late summer and the water level was low and we had so much silt inflow it got to a point where you couldn’t even get a kayak through for about six weeks. That’s an area that’s going to have to be looked at in the future if we want to think about maintaining recreational activities in that area.”

Like any 60-year-old, Monroe Lake will go on for a long time as long as its health is closely monitored and and steps are taken to ensure its survival.

For more information on Jill Vance’s story and the role of interpretive naturalists in the Indiana DNR, listen to her interview on Big Talk, Michael G. Glab’s weekly radio interview program on WFHB Community Radio.

Read More about Monroe Lake from Michael G. Glab

“How Healthy Is Lake Monroe — and How Long Will It Survive?”

“Lake Monroe is a reservoir, and all reservoirs eventually fill up,” says Michelle Cohen, executive director of Lake Monroe Water Fund. But, she adds, those who rely on the lake for drinking water, recreation, and other uses have the power to extend its life as long as possible. Writer Michael G. Glab takes a deep dive into the health of Lake Monroe. | Photography by Anna Powell Denton. Published August 2023

“Is B-town’s Tap Water Safe? A Full Report”

Reports about contaminants in Bloomington’s water supply have caused concern among residents, city officials, and consumer advocates (remember Erin Brockovich?). Journalist Michael G. Glab has looked into the controversy and discovered that drinking any water is a gambler’s game. Here’s his in-depth report on whether our drinking water is safe. | Photography by Lynae Sowinski. Published December 2016