Round Lake National Natural Landmark

Round Lake
View in October looking down the old spillway towards Green Lake.
Location	Green Lakes State Park, Fayetteville, New York, US
Coordinates	43°02′52″N 075°58′31″W / 43.04778°N 75.97528°W / 43.04778; -75.97528Coordinates: 43°02′52″N 075°58′31″W / 43.04778°N 75.97528°W / 43.04778; -75.97528
Lake type	meromictic
Basin countries	United States
Max. length	700 ft (210 m)
Max. width	700 ft (210 m)
Surface area	38 acres (15 ha)
Max. depth	180 ft (55 m)
U.S. National Natural Landmark
Designated	May 1973

Round Lake National Natural Landmark lies within Green Lakes State Park, which lies a few miles east of the city of Syracuse, New York and adjoining the village of Fayetteville. Round Lake itself and the adjoining 59 acres (24 ha) of old-growth forest were designated a National Natural Landmark in 1973 by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Hubert W. Vogelmann, a professor of botany at the University of Vermont, wrote the evaluation to the National Park Service that concurred with the recommendation of National Natural Landmark status for the region around Round Lake. Vogelmann's evaluation noted the "outstanding virgin mesophytic forest" adjoining Round Lake on its southwestern side; this text became part of the citation when the landmark was created. Vogelmann also noted Round Lake's importance as an extremely rare, "meromictic" lake. It shares this distinction with Green Lake, which lies a few hundred meters to the east.

The virgin quality of the forest near Round Lake was already considered unusual by 1855, when Ledyard Lincklaen noted that this "dense body of woodland had hardly felt the axe." The region of Upstate New York in which Round Lake lies was heavily forested through the 18th Century, but by 1855 the region had largely been deforested to create farmland. In the early 19th Century, Upstate New York was rapidly being settled by European-Americans. Soldiers who had fought in the Revolutionary War had often received land grants in this former Indian territory. Essentially the first act of most settlers was to cut down the primeval forest and to burn the hardwood logs to make potash, which was quite profitable in that era.