Lake Sylva

Lake Sylva
View northwest across Lake Sylva from the dam
Lake Sylva Location in New Jersey
Location	Ewing Township, Mercer County, New Jersey
Coordinates	40°16′17.74″N 74°46′27.59″W / 40.2715944°N 74.7743306°W
Type	Reservoir
Primary inflows	Shabakunk Creek
Primary outflows	Shabakunk Creek
Surface area	11 acres (4.5 ha)
Surface elevation	85 feet (26 m)

Lake Sylva is an 11-acre man-made lake along the Shabakunk Creek on the campus of The College of New Jersey in Ewing, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States.^[1][2] The lake was created when an earthen dam was constructed across the Shabakunk in the 1920s by a local landowner, prior to the construction of the current college campus. It once contained several islands, but these were removed during a dredging project in 1988-1989.^[3] The lake is adjacent to Lake Ceva, and together the two lakes are the basis of the name of the Hillwood Lakes section of Ewing.^[4]

References

1. "Sylva Lake". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey. September 8, 1979. Retrieved December 15, 2014.
2. "Environmental Resource Inventory for the Township of Ewing, Mercer County, New Jersey" (PDF). Retrieved May 27, 2013. There are two major lakes in Ewing Township: Lake Ceva and Lake Sylva. These open bodies of water are permanent waters and were created by damming Shabakunk Creek. Although they are classified as true lakes by federal and state maps, these lakes are man-made impoundments. Lake Sylva covers 10.6 acres and Lake Ceva covers 6.4 acres.
3. Gunter, Brianna. "Islands at the College - Who knew?". The Signal. Retrieved May 27, 2013. Lake Sylva and Lake Ceva sit quietly on the northern edges of campus, and even in warm weather there are often no more than a few people nearby. These lakes were once hubs of activity, however, and much of this was due to a handful of small islands on Lake Sylva. Anyone can see that there are no islands on either lake today, so what happened? The lakes were constructed in the early 1920s from two branches of the Shabakunk creek on what used to be fields, according to the book “The Land Along the Shabakunks” by Robert Reeder Green. Five islands were also formed at this time (one from an old earthen dam and the others simply from excess soil and rock), along with three arched timber bridges connecting a few of them to the mainland. All of this activity on the lakes came to a halt in the late 1980s. A Signal article from Oct. 4, 1988, explained that then-College President Harold W. Eickhoff had authorized a restoration project that began June of that year. This involved the drainage of Lake Sylva so that debris and silt built-up could be removed, and also so that flooding issues could be corrected. According to Levy, the dredging of Lake Sylva was also meant to create more land for the newly purchased Green Lane fields. Unfortunately for the remaining islands on the lake, this meant digging them out so that more water could be contained. By the completion of the restoration project in January 1989, all of Lake Sylva’s islands had vanished.
4. "The College of New Jersey". StateUniversity.com. Retrieved 2016-04-21. The campus itself is a quiet oasis within bustling Ewing Township, closed to outside traffic and encircled by Metzger Drive, a two-mile loop popular with joggers, walkers, and bikers. An abundance of trees and the bordering Hillwood Lakes—Lake Sylva and Lake Ceva—give the campus a natural, pristine feel, despite its location in the heart of suburban New Jersey.