Approaching it from the west, you look down on the lake from a roadside overview. If youвЂ™ve seen it, you already know why itвЂ™s called Mirror Lake. UtahвЂ™s idyllic lake lies in the scenic and wild Uinta Mountains вЂ¦ often called the High Uintas вЂ¦ rising up about 40 minutes east of 29, 1997.DonвЂ™t confuse Mirror Lake Utah with the lake by the same name found in Yosemite National Park. 19, 1922 Connecticut Daily Campus, May 10, 1967, вЂњParadise for Ducks, Turtles, Lovers,вЂќ Cornelia Anderson unpublished manuscript, Evan Hill, 1980.ДЄdapted from an article by Mark Roy in the UConn Advance, Sept. Sources: Connecticut Campus, May 11 and Oct.

Ice skating does, however, continue in winter on Swan Lake. Occasionally, still, a heron can be seen perched on a rock near the island.ДЄlthough students used to use the lake for boating, sailing, and ice skating, the opening of the UConn Ice Rink in 1965 (which preceded the Freitas Ice Forum) brought an end to its use for skating, and human activity in or on the water is no longer allowed. And for a time after the mid-1960s, there were also white ducks paddling through the water вЂ“ more abandoned pets, gifts between students at Easter that could no longer be hidden in dorm rooms. Feeding the birds was banned by state statute in the 1980s, and game wardens moved the waterfowl to other locales.ДЄt times, there have been brightly colored fish вЂ“ orange or combinations of orange, yellow, black, and white вЂ“ living in the lake, the descendants of abandoned pet goldfish. Soon the lake was dying from an overabundance of excrement. And seagulls started to congregate as well. With meals readily available, the birds stopped migrating to warmer regions. Concerned about how these wild animals would fare during the winter, some local residents began feeding the birds daily.

There have been other critter problems since then, too: in the 1970s and 1980s the lake suffered from an overpopulation of ducks and Canada geese. Some of the pines had fallen, and others were damaged by muskrats that lived on the lake those critters were trapped and removed. Late in the 1930s, the pines were replaced with spruces planted by Professor Albert E. The rope pull, which would last into the 1950s, was moved to its shores. In October, Mirror Lake was selected as the name from among those proposed, which included Meadow Lake, Zephyr Lake, Sunset Lake, Lake Hollister, Pine Grove Pond, Shadow Lake, Bantam Lake, Mansfield Lake, Fairview Lake, Merrythought Lake, Rainbow Lake, and Friendship Lake. InВ fall 1922, when students returned, The Connecticut Campus held a contest вЂњto have the honor of originating a name that will go down in the history of the college for the new lake.вЂќ There was already talk of moving the annual rope pull from Swan Lake.ДЄn important part of the project was to eliminate the pools where mosquitoes bred: it was hoped the new lake would вЂњalleviate the mosquito menaceвЂќ forВ faculty families living nearby. Weeds were cleared earth was moved to build up a mound, forming the island and pine seedlings were planted. The dam was to be about 250 feet long, and was intended to flood about four acres, with a maximum depth of six feet. The original work was announced in May 1922 in The Connecticut Campus (forerunner to The Daily Campus), and was scheduled for completion in early July. (Archives & Special Collections, UConn Library) Mirror Lake drained, showing the new dam, in 1946. (The dam was reinforced in 1935 after heavy spring rains caused a leak and in 1946, the lake was dredged and the dam again replaced.)

Then in 1922, the wooden dam was replaced with a soil dam. The lake was also used for ice skating and for many years in the pre-refrigerator era, students harvested blocks of ice to service the ice chests of the campus creamery, dining halls, and faculty homes. From 1908, the freshman and sophomore classes held an annual rope pulling contestВ there. Swan Lake, on the other hand, was the scene of many activities in the collegeвЂ™s early years вЂ“ when it was generally known as the Duck Pond. A small wooden dam was located at the northeast corner, forming what was barely a pond and more like a swamp. At that time, the now picturesque island with its lofty evergreens was just a clump of weeds and rushes. In 1918, Connecticut Agricultural College, as the school was then known,В acquired the land from the Whitney family. The site was once a marshy meadow, fed by a small brook, that in summer became a breeding ground for swarms of mosquitoes. White ducks walking by Mirror Lake in 1996.

Mirror lake