Learn More About the Coastal Dune Lakes Collection

The Coastal Dune Lake Collection is a collection of paintings I’m painted over a 2 year period after visiting each of the 15, rare coastal dune lakes of Walton County.  Coastal dune lakes are lakes that are in very close proximity to a body of water.  The lakes are fed from upland freshwater, like springs and streams.  The lakes have a beautiful black tea color that is mostly due to the decomposing pine needles that fall from the pine trees surrounding the lakes.  The cool thing about these lakes is that when the water level rises due conditions such as lots of rain, the water travels towards the beach, meandering through the sand dunes and eventually breaches into the beach water.  This is called an outfall.  In Walton County, the clear, turquoise water from the gulf mixes with the tea color water from the lake and voila’, gorgeousness!   This produces a rare ecosystem, home to fresh AND salt water species. Here in Walton County we are blessed to have 15 coastal dune lakes, said to be 10,000 year old.

Another cool fact:  You may think this is a normal thing, but Coastal dune lakes are only found in 2 states in the USA, Oregon and Florida plus Madagascar, New Zealand and Australia.