Next summer when out for a cruise in your boat on Lake Darling say a thanks to some lake home owners from the 1930’s when you pass through the buoys near Brown’s Point. Originally, Little Darling was a bay of Big Darling but a bar developed between them that was around 150 yards wide. If you lived on Big Darling, you were pretty much confined in a watercraft, without portaging, to Big Darling and Little Darling owners couldn’t enjoy Big Darling. There were Big Darling residents that didn’t want a channel opened as they said they were concerned that it would lower the level of the water on Big Darling. In response and in the evening hours, some of the Little Darling home owners dredged a channel between the two bodies of water.
This didn’t sit well with some of the Big Darling residents and legal action was started but it was ruled that the government survey of meandered lakes show Lake Darling as one lake. In 1958 the dredging of the channel between Big and Little Darling was done again at the suggestion of Alexandria Boat Works’ Clifford Movold. He said that pleasure boating was rising in popularity and that it would be beneficial if the lakes could be used by larger boats. Smart man.
