Great East Lake

Great East Lake is an 1825acre water body located in Carroll County, New Hampshire, and York County, Maine, in the United States. The lake is shared by the towns of Wakefield, New Hampshire, and Acton, Maine, with 45% of its surface area in Acton and 55% in Wakefield. The lake is the farthest upstream of the five headwater lakes of the Salmon Falls River, a tributary of the Piscataqua River. Water from Great East Lake flows out its dam and through the 800ft Newichawannock Canal into Horn Pond, then into the Salmon Falls River below Horn Pond.The widest part of the lake is in New Hampshire. The lake narrows to the east in Maine, creating the First, Second and Third basins. Great East Lake is the largest of the Salmon Falls headwater lakes.Great East Lake supports abundant wildlife, and 21 fish species including lake trout (togue), rainbow trout, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, American eel, hornpout, white perch, black crappie and chain pickerel.Water quality monitoring data has been collected since 1974, including 29 years of secchi disk transparencies, 23 years of total phosphorus (TP) data, 20 years of chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) data and 7 years of dissolved oxygen (DO) profiles. Sampling results from Station 1 (1974-2008) show a median TP concentration of 6.4 parts per billion (ppb), a mean secchi disk transparency of 9.2m, and a mean Chl-a concentration of 1.2 ppb. The data indicates that Great East Lake is a high quality water by both the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services standards.