Lake Marion (South Carolina)

Lake Marion
Lake Marion (top) and Lake Moultrie (bottom right) from space
Lake Marion
Location	Clarendon / Orangeburg / Berkeley / Calhoun / Sumter counties, South Carolina, US
Coordinates	33°27′14″N 80°09′50″W / 33.45389°N 80.16389°W / 33.45389; -80.16389
Type	reservoir
Basin countries	United States
Surface area	110,000 acres (45,000 ha)
Average depth	13.12 ft (4.00 m) [1]
Max. depth	76.77 ft (23.40 m) [1]

Lake Marion is a large man-made lake in central South Carolina. It has a 315-mile (507 km) shoreline and covers nearly 110,000 acres (450 square kilometers or 173.7 square miles)^[2] of rolling farmlands, former marshes, and river valley landscape. With territory spanning five counties, the lake is referred to as South Carolina's inland sea.

The Santee River was dammed in the 1940s to supply hydroelectric power, as part of the rural electrification efforts initiated under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal during the Great Depression. This created Lake Marion, one of the fifty largest lakes in the United States, whether natural or man-made reservoirs. At current capacity it is only about a third of the area of what, if filled to capacity, would be the fifteenth largest lake in the U.S..^[3]