Lake Dauterive and Lake Fausse Pointe function as one natural body of water, with Lake Dauterive lying north of Lake Fausse Pointe, just west of Bayou Chene, and draining south into Lake Fausse Pointe. It was cut off from the Atchafalaya River when Atchafalaya Basin levees were built in the 1930s, and today it receives runoff from surrounding lands and remains relatively shallow, ranging from nine or 10 feet at its deepest point to 18 inches in highly sedimented areas. The lake is home to one of the oldest documented cypress trees in Louisiana, an approximately 1,000-year-old bald cypress with a circumference of 17 feet and a diameter of 5.4 feet. It is part of a group of old growth cypress that was not harvested between 1870 and 1920, when many ancient cypress groves in south Louisiana were clear-cut, and its age was estimated from core density of samples taken from its exterior. Bald cypress trees in their native habitat produce conical root “knees,” whose function remains uncertain, though some believe they help roots get oxygen or provide stability, and unlike most conifers, the bald cypress is deciduous and loses its needles in the fall, giving it a bald appearance part of the year. An icon of southern swamps, the bald cypress is Louisiana’s State Tree. Lake Dauterive was named for A. B. Dauterive, a prominent planter who owned St. Rose de Lima Plantation, later called Caroline Plantation, once located at the lake; the Dauterive family was French and of noble descent, and their name was formerly spelled “D'Hauterive,” while early accounts of the 1862 Confederate Camp Dauterive rendered the area as “deHuitreve” or “doctrive.”