Upper Lake Lafayette: Yep, it’s dry, too

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The Red Hills region has four large sinkhole lakes, and one of them gets a lot of the attention. Lake Jackson dries down as it has for thousands of years, and when it does, it’s not a far hike from Faulk Landing to see Porter Sink. It’s an impressive sight: Tallahassee’s little Grand Canyon. On the other side of Leon County, few people see it when Upper Lake Lafayette dries down. Few people see Upper Lake Lafayette at all.

Lake Lafayette is the most heavily altered of our local sinkhole lakes. Earthen dams and train tracks have partitioned the lake into four separate water bodies. One of them, Piney Z Lake, is likely the most visited lake in Tallahassee. Many people have seen Lower Lake Lafayette, though they may not know what it’s called. When you cross the train bridge from Alford Greenway and walk onto the earthen dam down the trail, that’s Lower Lake Lafayette across from Piney Z Lake.

You can’t see Upper Lake Lafayette from Piney Z, though you might catch a glimpse from an overlook on the Cadillac Trail. The one public access to the lake is in the Fallschase neighborhood, which is still only half-built. Like our other sinkhole lakes, it dries down, and it’s dry now. I’ve seen a lot of the sinkholes in Lake Jackson and Lake Miccosukee, and now, I want to see this one.

Walking to Fallschase Sink in Upper Lake Lafayette

I’ve written about Upper Lake Lafayette in the past, but always in relation to the rest of Lake Lafayette. When a sinkhole is separated from the rest of its lake, there are ecological consequences. This is true of Lake Miccosukee and Lake Iamonia. Lake Jackson is the only area sinkhole lake never to have had its sinkhole isolated in any way.

You wouldn’t know it to look at Piney Z, Lower Lake Lafayette, and Alford Arm, but Lake Lafayette is in a dry down.

Here is the Upper Lake Lafayette lake bed. It has been dry for long enough to have grown plentiful grasses and wildflowers.

This is either butterweed or golden ragwort. The lake is full of them.

Fallschase sinkhole is further away than it looked on the map. I explore a little along the way. It doesn’t look like there’s much to see until you get out into it and look down. This one snuck up on me:

I left my cellphone in the car, and I start to wonder. If I fell in, how would anyone know where to find me? How easy would it be to climb out?

Edit 4/17/26: I talked to Michael Hill, a retired FWC biologist who is my go-to for sinkhole lake information. He told me that he counted over thirty of these small sinkholes in the lake bed. He once encountered a deer that had fallen in and died.

This is a reminder that this lake bed is a dynamic area. Sinkholes expand, and the area around them can be treacherous. As I look across the open lake bed, I can see depressions that look like they could become sinkholes. This is a place to watch your step.

A small stream in the lake bed

After some meandering, I find a path to follow. Like in Lake Jackson, a small stream leads to the sinkhole basin.

These lakes have dried down periodically for thousands of years, at least. Often enough that flowing water has carved channels into their lake beds. Eventually, the stream goes dry.

The stream leads here:

I’ve seen a few photos where the water is lower than it is here, and you can see into the sinkhole just a little more. It’s not as dramatic as Porter Sink, but this landscape has its own charms. Upper Lake Lafayette is 354 acres, and I’m curious to explore it further while it’s dry. What other karst features are there to see, or are currently developing? Something tells me that I would find a few interesting surprises out there.

What I really wonder, though, is how this lake would look as one uninterrupted Lake Lafayette.

When a sinkhole lake doesn’t dry down…

Looking at the map, I think back to where that small stream went dry. In a dried-down Lake Jackson, streams carry water from deeper basins within the lake into Porter Sink. In the historic Lake Lafayette, that deeper basin was Piney Z Lake. Most of Lower Lake Lafayette is shallower, and would likely go dry.

Not drying down has altered the ecology of Lower Lake Lafayette. As explained to us by (now) retired FWC biologist Michael Hill, when a lake dries down, the vegetative matter that accumulates in it dries out. When a sinkhole lake doesn’t dry down, that matter forms floating mats of decomposing vegetation, and plants start to grow from these mats. These floating islands are called tussocks, and in Lower Lake Lafayette, trees grow from them.

The lake is so overgrown with woody vegetation that the state had to spend millions of dollars to carve a paddling trail through it. We explored that a few years back, and it was not unlike kayaking in a swamp. In fact, Leon County weighed reclassifying it as a wetland.

I also think about birds. Piney Z is already a birding hotspot. You don’t have to be an overly experienced birder to see a diversity of birds and other wildlife here. But, as we learned at Lake Jackson some years back, birds flock to a dried down lake. They seem especially active just after the water drops, and also when it fills back up. Shifting shorelines create new feeding habitats.

I have a lot of “what ifs” when it comes to Lake Lafayette. I think the best way to stoke my imagination is to continue to explore the fragments of this historic lake, and see what other small surprises I can find.

A few additional photos