Once connected to the Atchafalaya River, Lake Fausse Pointe was cut off from the river’s flow and sediment deposits when Atchafalaya Basin levees were completed in the 1930s, and its shape has remained unchanged since then. Although named as two separate lakes, Lake Fausse Pointe and Lake Dauterive function as one natural body of water about 25 miles southeast of Lafayette in the Teche-Vermillion basin. Just outside the West Atchafalaya Basin Levee, Lake Fausse Pointe had once been part of a series of five large lakes collectively known first as Lake Chitimacha and later as Grand Lake. After Captain Shreve cleared the Great Raft in the 1830s, increasing the flow of water and sediment into the Atchafalaya Basin, Lake Fausse Pointe and the rest of Grand Lake slowly filled with deposits that formed delta landforms in open water. The delta in the lake grew from 1919 to 1932, when the Basin levee severed the lake from Grand Bayou, the Atchafalaya River distributary that fed it. Unlike portions of Grand Lake that remained inside the levee and connected to the river, Lake Fausse Pointe has not changed shape since that separation. Drainage once flowed east toward the Atchafalaya River, but the lake’s watershed is now confined to the northwest between the Bayou Teche ridge and the levee, and water from outside that area can enter only through man-made control structures. The area was formerly home to the Chitimacha Indians, and from the mid-1700s French and Acadian farmers and trappers dominated the region, though Spain controlled the land from 1763 until 1802 and sent many Spaniards and Canary Islanders, called Isleños, to the New Iberia area. These settlements added to the region’s cultural diversity. Agriculture became a major industry, with sugar cane the main crop by 1830, and although repeated flooding enriched the soil, it disrupted traditional farming after the Civil War until industrial renewal brought mechanized rice farming, commercial hunting, fishing, and tree harvesting. Because Lake Fausse Pointe lost its connection to the Atchafalaya River, its main source of water and sediment today is runoff from surrounding lands, many still in farms, resulting in less fresh water inundation during high river periods and a buildup of agricultural runoff, while sedimentation and vegetation control remain challenges. The 6,000-acre Lake Fausse Pointe State Park, bounded on the east by the Basin levee and on the west by the natural levee of Bayou Teche, preserves this isolated Louisiana swamp and its large bald cypress trees.