Mattamuskeet: New Deal Workers and a Lake Refuge

Lake Mattamuskeet is the largest natural lake in North Carolina, stretching about eighteen miles long and seven miles wide. The federal government acquired it in nineteen thirty-four and declared it a wildlife refuge, one of the first created under President Roosevelt. The real transformation came from Civilian Conservation Corps crews, who arrived between nineteen thirty-four and nineteen forty-two.

They built waterfowl impoundments, fire breaks, and roads. Their most striking project converted an old drainage pumping station into Mattamuskeet Lodge, a three-story inn topped by a one-hundred-twenty-foot observation tower. The lodge became a nationally known hunting destination for tundra swans and Canada geese until it closed in nineteen seventy-four.

Today the refuge protects vital habitat along the Atlantic Flyway.