This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: White Classification: Lookup Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/4243 Message Board Post: THE COUNCIL BLUFFS NONPAREIL. July 19, 1933. " 'Lotus Lake' in Full Bloom in River Bottoms on Iowa Side Near Nebraska City".-- Shenandoah, July 19.--A "lotus lake" in the Missouri river bottoms on the Iowa side near Nebraska City is in full bloom. The magnificent flowers of creamy white are from ten inches to a foot across, while the olive green leaves are twenty inches to a foot in diameter. The flowers are all above the water as they do not float like water lilies. Before the old Waubonsie lake was drained it was one of the largest lotus beds in America, 700 acares of lotus, one of the most beautiful of America's wild flowers. Artists and lovers of wild flowers would climb the high bluffs by the lake and sit for hours enraptured by the beauty before them. If one wants to see the lotus in full bloom, the trip must not be too early in the morning or too late in the afternoon as the flowers close for the night like the water lily. It is supposed that the flowers were transplanted by the early Indians, who used the seed pods for rattles for the papoose. The roots taste like the sweet potato. N.B.: Waubonsie Lake would have been in the old Half Breed Farm neighborhood, and north of present day Thurman, Iowa. And remember that all of the so-called Indian Mounds described in 1835 would have been there, also, during the residency of those early inhabitants of northwestern Fremont county........Of course, this particular reference would be to White's Lake, opposite Nebraska City.--W.F.