Why Florida Built a 143-Mile Wall Around Its Biggest Lake (It’s Not the Alligators)

Lake Okeechobee is 730 square miles, the biggest lake in Florida and the second-largest freshwater lake entirely inside the United States. Over two million people live within an hour of it. And you can drive the entire way around it without ever seeing the water. That's because the lake is surrounded by the Herbert Hoover Dike: 143 miles of earthen wall, up to 30 feet high, built after one night in September 1928 when the lake left its bed and killed more than 2,500 people. Nearly a century later, the wall is still there, taller than ever, and the towns that sit "on the lake" (Clewiston, Belle Glade, Pahokee, Okeechobee) still have no waterfront. This video explains why Florida walled off its biggest lake, why it never took the wall down, and what the land behind the dike turned into. It is not the alligators. Sources U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District: Herbert Hoover Dike Rehabilitation South Florida Water Management District: Lake Okeechobee facts and operations National Weather Service: The 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane Florida Department of Environmental Protection: Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail Lawrence E. Will, "Okeechobee Hurricane and the Hoover Dike" (1961) Zora Neale Hurston, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937), on the 1928 flood Every number in this video is from the sources above. If you grew up on the lake and we got something wrong, say it in the comments, we read all of them. #florida #lakeokeechobee #geography