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List of lakes of West Virginia

Wikimedia list article

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 22, 2025
Entity authorityQ6624847 ↗
Source-derived summary

There are more than 250 lakes and reservoirs in the U.S. state of West Virginia.

Overview

Trout Pond, situated in Hardy County, is West Virginia's sole natural lake. The state's largest reservoir is Summersville Lake, located in Nicholas County, encompassing a surface area of 2,790 acres (1,130 ha). Spruce Knob Lake, found in Randolph County, holds the distinction of being the highest lake in the state at an elevation of 3,845 feet (1,172 m). Additionally, West Virginia is home to ten reservoirs owned by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). As of 2025, at least one public lake is present in 48 of the state’s 55 counties, reflecting the state’s extensive freshwater resources.

Editorial summary

“List of lakes of West Virginia” enters the record as wikimedia list article. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what List, lakes and West can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2025—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around List, lakes and West.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“List of lakes of West Virginia” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, List, lakes and West provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6624847. The Library of Congress control number is sh85074139. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow List of lakes of West Virginia primary sources, List of lakes of West Virginia archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of lakes of West Virginia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.