Walter Wirth Lake (aka Lake Wirth) is a lake in Salem, Oregon, United States. Walter Wirth Lake is wholly contained within Cascades Gateway Park. The park and lake began development in 1957 with the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce working with the State Highway Department to convert a gravel burrow pit into a park. Original development of the park included a swimming area, paddle boats, a children's zoo, and concession stands. In 1976 a Department of Environmental Quality study determined the lake to be suffering the effects from upstream polluters closing the lake to swimming. Since that time the lake has held numerous programs in canoeing, sailing, and fishing, it is now open for swimming again.
Famous quotes containing the words walter and/or lake:
“All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)
“What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone! None of your half-mile swamps, none of your mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide-board and station, over ground much of it impassable in summer!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)