Highland Lake is no more...

. . . for now, anyway.

Highland Lake is a man-made lake, and every so often, the lake is drained so work can be done: dredging, clean up, etc. That's happening right now. The lake's drain pipe is at the dam bottom on the right side, so if you drive by now, you'll see no water coming over the dam, but water gushing out of the lower pipe.

Highland Lake was created in the 1790s when John Earle received a land grant and built the first grist mill at the bottom of the dam. In 1873, the property was inherited by Henrietta Aiken Rhett from her father, William Aiken, governor of South Carolina (1844-46). The lake was then called Rhett's Mill Pond, with the mill still at the bottom of the dam (and the original location of the Flat Rock Playhouse in the 1940s).

Highland Lake is fed by several streams, the biggest being King's Creek.

You can see on this map King's Creek coming into the lake from the south, and the dam is at the north end (right across from the Highland Lake golf course off of North Highland Lake Road).

Here's a view showing the terrain around the lake. During the time that the Catholic Church owned the lake and the surrounding area for their camp, Our Lady of the Hills (1950s to mid-1980s), they named the lake Madonna Lake, but I never heard anyone actually call it that--it was always Highland Lake when I was growing up.

If you visit the Highland Lake Inn and walk by down to the lake, you'll see a statute of the Madonna, a reminder from camp days.

I'm not sure when the switch was made from Rhett's Mill Pond to Highland Lake, perhaps when the lake was sold out of the Rhett family around 1910.

No worries about the lake, though, once the drain pipe is closed, the incoming streams will fill the lake back up.