Kingsley Lake – the world’s most circular lake

3 min read

4 months ago Robin

Lakes come in all shapes and sizes, but when it comes to roundness, you won’t find a more naturally-affair body of water than Florida’s Kingsley Lake, also know as Silver Dollar Lake due its almost perfect shape.

Kingsley Lake is a popular summer destination in in North East Florida’s Clay County, as well as one of the best bass fisheries in the entire state, but few know that what truly makes this place special is its unusually round shape.
The thing is, you can only truly see how round the lake is from high above, and It’s important to note that Kingsley Lake is not a man-made body of water, but a naturally occurring one which reportedly formed as a sinkhole, now spring fed.
The lake is named for Zephaniah Kingsley (1765-1843), a planter, slave trader, and merchant who owned a plantation east of the lake.
In fact the lake is about 1.5 kilometers east of the historic Alachua Trail towards Georgia and was a favorite trail used by Indians on their travels in the past, the scene of many incidents between Indians and white men during the 1830s and 40s.
According to legend, one such incident occurred when Captain Kingsley was surrounded by Indians on a trail south of the lake, and his only way to escape was to ride his horse into the lake and swim to the west coast. Unfortunately, the horse was said to have dropped dead from exhaustion, and the lake has been called Kingsley ever since.

Measuring about two miles across and featuring about 5.5 miles of shoreline, the north and west sides of which host nearly two hundred docks, mainly in the western part of the lake, where the settlement of the same name is located.
Moreover, camp Blanding is on the east side of the lake as part of the Florida National Guard, and a small airstrip to the southeast of the lake is part of it.
Kingsley Lake’s deepest point is about 100 feet (30 m), making it one of the deepest lakes in Florida.
According to some source, this natural anomaly is also considered the oldest and highest lake in Florida, located on the edge of the Trail Ridge formation, which was the first part of the Florida peninsula to emerge above sea level in the Pleistocene era.