White Lake is located inside Cullinan Park in Sugar Land, near the intersection of Highway 6 and Highway 90A, just north of the Sugarland Regional Airport. The lake is home to sunfish, bluegill, bass, gar and bowfin. Gators too. And egret, heron, anhinga, ibis, grebe and coot. So say the signs.
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| Park sign |
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Location map |
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Aerial view |
I've been thinking of paddling White Lake for several years. My interest in the lake started when I did a series of hikes in the park, one of which went through the woods around the entire circumference of the lake. And also during my time investigating and paddling Pumpkin Lake, its sister lake on the inaccessible western side of the park. And I've never found any evidence that anyone else has paddled the lake before - there are no such reports on the internet. I like paddling waters where few have been before. So it was time to quit procrastinating and just do it, and to make this location known.
White Lake is roughly circular in shape, and about one-third of a mile in diameter. It's not that big, but it's a place to paddle, has free admission, and it reportedly has a lot of water birds. I also thought it would be fun to see the shoreline from the lake, when I've already seen the lake from the shoreline.
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Hodge's land grant |
In prehistory, a water body like this most certainly would have been occupied along the shore by Native Americans, probably the Karankawa or the Akokisa. Historically, the area was first settled by Anglo's starting with Alexander Hodge, who was born in 1760 in Pennsylvania. Alexander fought in the Revolutionary War with Francis Marion, "The Swamp Fox", and moved to Texas in 1825 to become one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" original settlers of Texas. He established Hodge's Bend Plantation on the league of land he was granted, which ran from the Brazos River and to the east past Oyster Bayou (now Oyster Creek), and included the northern half of Round Lake, which is now White Lake. The Hodge's Bend Cemetery is located on a high knoll on the north bank of the lake, and contains Hodge family members and other early settlers.
There is a canoe launch right at the parking lot, just 50 feet from the closest parking spaces. Like a dunce, I parked under a shade tree at the other end of the parking lot, and had to carry my boat 250 feet to the launch. The shoreline is choked with brush and weeds, and this is the only feasible entry point. I walked 300 yards down the trail to the east to an overlook spot where the brush and weeds are narrow, but that still looked difficult. And it was a 300-yard portage. So, the parking lot entry was the spot.
There are also a lot of water lilies covering the surface. They aren't an obstacle to paddling, but you hate to run over them or mangle them with a paddle. The next problem is that you are hemmed in by the brush and the boardwalk, with no way around these obstacles. But the boardwalk is just high enough above the water surface that you can pass underneath it if you duck down low. So you have to make like that old song from the 1960's by The Drifters, and go "Under the Boardwalk". I had to lean forward onto my thwart, and push myself through by reaching up with my hands onto the wood beams. You can't really operate a paddle in that position. With a kayak, which is lower on the water than a canoe, this would be even easier. A Park Dept. person says there is a trail running around the brush to the right, so you might want to look for that.
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Canoe launch
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Canoe launch |
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Put-in map
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| Under the boardwalk |
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Lilies |
Once past the boardwalk you're into the open lake surface and free to go where you please. However, the surface is currently covered in green scum, which makes paddling difficult. It didn't smell bad, it's just unsightly. And there are only two areas, about 100-yards diameter each, in the middle of the lake which are free from this scourge. The scum makes paddling difficult in several ways. One, it creates a lot of drag on the boat so that you don't glide freely when paddling. Depending upon the thickness of the scum, I could only get one to two feet of forward progress with each stroke. Second, there was no forward glide from momentum on the end of each stroke, like in clear water - when your paddle stroke stops, your boat stops. And third, every time you lift your paddle at the end of a stroke to bring it forward again, there are several pounds of scum hanging off the blade. So I modified the end of my stroke to lift the blade out of the water, point it straight down and give it a shake, to dislodge the accumulated scum. So, a stroke went something like this: reach forward, dip into water, pull backwards, lift paddle, rotate paddle vertical, shake, repeat. And all of that for only a foot or two of motion. I kind of felt like an ice-breaker in the arctic ocean trying to bang its way through a layer of ice.
In addition to the surface scum, the water below the surface is full of coon-tail aquatic weeds, which also grab hold of your paddle and entangle it. You're not so much paddling by using water resistance, your'e sort of poleing by pushing off the weeds.
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| Pond scum |
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Scum trail |
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Coon-tail |
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Coon-tail |
Water lilies form a wide blanket around the shoreline, with large, beautiful flowers, and massive leaves floating on the surface.
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| Slime, lilies, shore |
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Lilies |
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Lily flower |
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Snail eggs |
With all the scum covering the surface, blocking the sunlight, I wonder about the health of the lake for the fish. The depth in most places was about 5 feet - I could touch bottom by dipping my paddle all the way down. Out in the center I could not, and the lake is reportedly about 10 feet deep.
I used Google Earth to look at aerial photos of the lake going back in time several decades. The scum seems to be cyclic. Some years it's there. Some years the lake is clear. So, right now is just a bad time, and hopefully it will go away again soon.
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Clear water! |
I mucked my way around the edge of the lake, a hundred yards from shore. And after that, plowed my way to the center where those clear spots exist, and enjoyed normal easy paddling for a little while. Ahhh, it was glorious!
I didn't spot any gators. Nor fish, but I did see some surface "V" ripples, so they're down there. I don't think fishing would be possible, because lures would just get tangled up in the weeds. Birds were also scarce. I spotted a few egrets and a lesser heron. But that was about it. There were no gaggles of ducks paddling around like on Pumpkin Lake.
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| Temperature |
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The temperature was up to 98 degrees, with a slight breeze. The breeze was welcome for its cooling effect, even though it was blowing my bow around a little. But not enough that I couldn't compensate.
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Jet aircraft |
The Sugar Land Regional Airport is adjacent to the south, and approaching aircraft fly over just to the east of the lake on their approach to land on the runway. The small piston planes aren't too noisy, but the turboprops are louder, and the business jets are really loud.
All in all, this could be a nice, convenient place to paddle if the surface scum wasn't there. I don't want to condemn the lake because of conditions encountered during a single visit, especially since the historic photo review showed it to be a come-and-go condition. So, catch it when the lake is clear, and go paddle it. And if it's exercise you seek, well, the scum just increases your exercise!