Horseshoe Lake

A quiet lake in Carondelet Park with a name that hints at the old landscape beneath the city.

Horseshoe Lake

Horseshoe Lake is one of the defining landscape features of Carondelet Park, a small body of water folded into one of South St. Louis's oldest major parks.

The Story

Carondelet Park was established in the 1870s as part of St. Louis's push to create large public parks beyond the crowded central city. Horseshoe Lake became part of the park's picturesque landscape of water, slopes, paths and mature trees.

Unlike a monumental building, the lake's appeal is precisely that it feels ordinary and old: a piece of landscape that generations of St. Louisans have walked around, fished beside and used as a visual anchor inside the park.

The lake's shape is not merely picturesque landscaping. Carondelet Park sits on karst terrain, a landscape shaped by soluble limestone, underground drainage, caves, and sinkholes. In 1913, nine existing sinkholes were joined together to create Horseshoe Lake. What looks today like an ordinary park lake is therefore built directly into the strange geology beneath south St. Louis.