TPL Design

Toward the end of 1995, Lake Wildwood (Macon, GA) was drained to allow access for construction crews to bury new sewage pipes. The process was not complete until the summer of 1996.

I grew up living on Lake Wildwood and, as a kid, had often wondered about its depth and what was on the bottom. When the construction project was announced, I was excited to finally have the chance to see what was down there. It turned out to be a bed of clay dotted with hundreds of tree stumps. Apparently when the dam was constructed, and in preparation for the lake's creation, workers just cut down the many trees growing in what would become the lake bed, as it had been a wooded area with a creek running through it.

Of course there were also many discarded tires, a section or two of corrugated drain pipe, Christmas trees weighted down for fish habitat, and other random junk. As can be seen at the very beginning of the video, I even found a small sunken boat of some type. I was actually aware of its existence prior to the lake's draining because it had floated by half submerged a year or two before. I knew it went under completely near the neighbor's dock.

So, if you ever wondered how Lake Wildwood would look without water, the photos above and this short video show the empty lake and some of the construction in 1995 and 1996.