Why did the Indians buy Lake Spotted Lake and keep tourists out of it?

This amazing lake is located in southwestern Canada, in the province of British Columbia. Spotted Lake translates as "spotted lake", which pretty accurately characterizes the unusual appearance of this reservoir. The lake is so important for the local tribe of the Indians that they even raised an impressive amount of money and bought the surrounding territory and the reservoir itself from a private owner.

Spotted Lake has such an original appearance due to its chemical composition. It is interesting that spots appear on its surface only in the summer, after prolonged heat, and in other seasons of the year it is a completely ordinary reservoir.

The waters of this lake are saturated with mineral salts of magnesium, calcium, silver and sodium. And the concentration of magnesium sulfates in Spotted Lake is higher than in any other lake in the world. With the onset of hot and dry weather, the water level in the lake begins to fall, exposing salt accumulations at its bottom. The remaining water accumulates in small depressions, between which areas with salt deposits rise. Salt forms a dense crust on which you can even walk.

Fish and other large aquatic organisms are not found in the salt lake, its water is not suitable for drinking, and they do not bathe in this lake either. But a rich mineral composition more than pays for all the above disadvantages. A unique combination of salts helps the lake to have healing properties. This fact was the cause of interesting events taking place around the reservoir for the past half century.

On the lands of British Columbia in the region of an unusual lake, the Okanagan Indians have long lived, in whose language the reservoir is called Klluk. The Indians revered this lake as a shrine and knew about its healing properties. There is even a legend in the Okanagan tribe that tells of the miraculous healing of wounded soldiers who washed their wounds with lake water. The warring tribes after another battle descended to the lake, and the wounds right before his eyes healed after contact with wonderful water. Then the leaders of the tribe reasoned that it makes no sense to inflict wounds on each other if they heal so easily. Since then, the war has stopped, and the lake has become sacred to the Okanagan.

Since the 60s of the XX century, the area around the lake belonged to a certain Ernest Smith. He was well aware of the therapeutic properties of local minerals and even planned to build a spa resort on the shore. But the Okanagan Indians, who found out about this, turned to the owner with a proposal to buy out the lake so that the sacred pond for them would remain in its original form. The negotiations, which lasted more than 20 years, ended in 2001, when the Okanagan Indians bought the area around the lake (22 hectares) for $ 720,000.

Since the lake has now become the private property of the Okanagan Indians, they have disposed of it at their discretion. A sacred pond was fenced, and access to the shore is possible only with the permission of the elder of the tribe. But the lake is clearly visible from the nearby road, and tourists continue to come here to take photos of the amazingly beautiful spotted pond. Interestingly, the shades of the water of the spotted lake vary with the weather.