Lake Mattamuskeet
lake of the United States of America
Lake Mattamuskeet is the largest natural lake in North Carolina. It is a shallow coastal lake, averaging 2–3 ft (0.61–0.91 m) feet in depth, and stretches 18 miles (29 km) long and 7 miles (11 km) wide. Lake Mattamuskeet lies on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula.
Lake Mattamuskeet is the location of Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge as well as surrounding public and private lands in eastern North Carolina are a major wintering site for waterfowl including ducks like northern pintail and green-wing teal, geese like Canada geese and tundra swans.
Gallery
New Holland
New Holland is a community in Hyde County, North Carolina, located along the southern shore of Lake Mattamuskeet. Between 1911 and 1934, three private investment companies partnered with the public Mattamuskeet Drainage District to build the world's largest capacity pumping plant and dredge 130 miles (210 km) of large navigable canals to drain 50,000-acre (200 km2) Lake Mattamuskeet for residential, commercial, and agricultural development. The lake drainage project also gave badly needed drainage relief to about 550 farmers around the lake whose farms drained by gravity into the huge lakebed. The investors created a community within the reclaimed lakebed and named it "New Holland," after similar land reclamation projects in the Netherlands. The drainage project ended when the third private owner sold the lake property to the United States government in 1934 to allow the creation of a migratory bird refuge.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lake Mattamuskeet” as lake of the United States of America. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as lake of the United States of America. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5969534. VIAF identifies the subject as 316596832. The Library of Congress control number is sh2015001522. Authority coordinates are 35.499, -76.189. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911 and 1934.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. 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
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Lake Mattamuskeet”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Lake Mattamuskeet primary sources, Lake Mattamuskeet archive and Lake research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lake Mattamuskeet”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Lake Mattamuskeet” 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.