Weird ghost pond or pond revenant?

There’s a spot in my land that Was once a pond (old aerial photos show it) and I want to figure out if it will be a pond again. (Or if I should try to make it one…)

It has great slope, but it is shaded to a fair degree. But there’s just enough light to plant some things. I’m trying to understand what happened here, so that I can have some idea what’s going to happen.

It looks like there used to be a pond here, maybe just a seasonal pond, but enough to be in multiple aerial photos from every year before we moved here that I see. I dont know, so they photograph at different times of year each year?  Whatever it is created die off of the plants and trees around there. Then maybe five years ago, something pulled the plug in the bathtub, I believe, and all the water drained down through this one sink-hole-looking thing. The diameter of it is maybe 5 to 7 feet, and it goes down 2 to 3 feet.  There’s not much of anything growing in it, some ferns, and nothing is remarkable about the soil in it. I’ve never seen standing water in this pond area not in the sinkhole, even though we’ve had the wettest year I’ve ever seen in my life. I haven’t looked that often, not during a torrential rain, but it rained a lot in the past couple days and there’s still no accumulation there today. It doesn’t even feel swampy, just damp.

(Alternate theory is there’s a giant vacuum cleaner under the property that sucks all the water and deposits in the bank)

In that area, there’s grass, and maybe 10 foot tall saplings, mostly Hawthorn. One of them even had berries! I never see any hawthorns with berries around here. Another thing that’s changing is that the Pines seem to be falling. Two down, a couple to go .

So I’m thinking this is a spot that’s going to turn into a bit of food forest. Not wet feet, but not sandbox, dry like the rest of the land either. it would be hard to bring equipment down there, but it can be worked with hand tools.

My concern is that there’s some thing I’ve missed, and that it’s going to eventually turn back into a pond again. Or a seasonal tree-murderer.

It also seems like it would be a good idea to terrace what’s around there, but that would mean taking down some pretty old trees, deciduous, and I can’t really justify that in my mind .  It seems a lot of nutrient is washing down into that sink hole. Maybe just micro swales would make sense, since it’s not gonna be any less of a frost pocket anyway?

The other possibility is that it was some weird toxic chemical, and supporting this theory is the fact that people have thrown trash down there for maybe a century. There’s some interesting antiques, I found some gutters they were useful. An old heater tank, an oven from the 30s or something.  But I would think that whatever was toxic would’ve washed the way down to the sinkhole long ago too. Unless there’s something I don’t know about.  Thoughts?

ETA I must have hallucinated the pond in some of the older aerial photos, it looks much more like it's just shadow from the pines in a few of them.  

I now think it's seasonal and has been for a while.

I'm not entirely sure where the property boundary is, though I think the abutting neighbor (No Name/the railroad company?) could be persuaded to sell some land they're doing nothing with and still have plenty margin between for the railway corridor.

I'm going to look up sinkholes now.

What is even stranger is that we are not in an area prone to sinkholes at all.

The kind of hollow I see here is what I've seen at a spring head.

We have sand below sand below sand, and what holds up the sand? It's sand all the way down.  Even the molten Earth's core is replaced by sand here.  Weird, I know.

So where did this sinkhold get some bedrock to borrow for its performance??

Maybe the quarry nextdoor holds the answers...maybe it was a spring once??  maybe a result of the piping of water over to the barn nearby before the fire in the 40's??

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:What is even stranger is that we are not in an area prone to sinkholes at all.

Sinkholes can appear in areas that have been used as dump sites. People throw stuff in, then cover it up with soil. Things break down and decompose, water rushes in to rinse things out, and then there are air pockets.

You mentioned in an earlier post that it had been used for dumping for over a century. Could the sink hole be the result of dumping, in this case? Is there a suitable lack of civilization nearby to make it a convenient out-of-the-way spot for scrap dumpers?

Meanwhile... Is there any way to have even a small excavator go down there and press around, in an attempt to seal the pond? Do you think there's a risk of more sink holes appearing, then swallowing up said excavator? Could you hire someone's hogs to tromp around in the area, and seal the pond that way?

Picture of sinkhole.

Ghost pond area

Maybe pigs. I have an energizer on that side already. Also the quarry borders me and maybe they could drive over without disturbing much, but it’s doubtful they have a small enough machine. But maybe I could drive one up from the quarry.


The sinkhole is farther down than the dump area, I doubt it’s from dumped stuff but maybe somebody disposed of a particular item there…

Thanks.

Couple questions:

Did you go to the county? They have old time/last century maps of previous salt, coal, gold, silver, etc. mines. See if you can find any years ago uses of your "pond" spot. And they have topography maps. Take a look at the lay of the land from a larger perspective than just standing in one spot. Also, has your land been tiled. Here in Ohio, the entire western part of the state was originally swampy. They tiled everything to remove the excess water. If you had been tiled, maybe it failed and allowed water to collect in that spot again. Then erosion opened it up again allowing the water to drain. If you had a pond, did it have muskrats? They can tunnel and "accidently" drain a pond. A hundred years ago on our land, the farmer always threw the last furrow into the pond. He wanted it gone. Over time it worked. Between the added dirt and the natural buildup of dead cattails and such, the pond is about gone now. Could something like that have happened?

If it was mine and I wanted a pond in that spot, I'd dig the spot out and see what's what. If the topography maps indicate a pond is possible, then try and see. But be careful not to fall into an old mine.  If it still drains, you can line it with clay or bentonite. If you do install a pond, make sure it is allowed by gov't water use laws. I'd also check and see if a pond might also lower your insurance rates in case of fire. Having a water source nearby that the fire department can pump from can be very helpful.