Lake Conestee once covered about 130 acres within the area shown on four aerial photos. The original lake was created when the current dam at the mill was built about 1892. As Greenville grew upstream, sediment from development and industrial discharge gradually filled the lake. During World War II, construction of Donaldson Air Force Base on Marrow Bone Creek to the west increased the rate of sedimentation, and in the 1950s construction of I-85 to the north accelerated it further. Before 1943, sedimentation occurred mainly where the Reedy River and Marrow Bone Creek entered the lake, and a spot that had been in the middle of an hourglass-shaped lake later lay just west of the banks of the Reedy River as it re-emerged from the lake. By 1955 much of the northern half of the lake had filled, and in 1970 the main channel of the Reedy still passed just east of that spot, though a new channel had already begun to emerge farther east against the hills. Between 1970 and the late 1980s, the Reedy River shifted completely to its present location more than 500 feet east, and virtually all of the northern part and much of the southern part of the lake became land. By 2006, sediment that had filled much of the southern half since the 1980s had migrated all the way to the dam, and the remaining open water might eventually fill as well. Trees behind this area grew after 1955 as land emerged from the lake, while a wetland in front, once dry land, formed after beavers built a dam and killed the trees, creating habitat for diverse wildlife.