The Cheney Lake I mentioned was sort of a low spot in some farmland, and they threw some dirt in the creek to stop it up and made a lake out of it. They did very little other "preparatory work" other than to knock on the doors at a couple of barns to make sure they were empty.

Several times I found a "fence post" about half a foot under the surface when my sonar said I was in 28 ft of water. It was actually a telephone pole, that took close to 20 years to get rotten enough that somebody knocked a few feet off the top of it.

There was also a railroad track running across the lake. Salvage value of the rails would have been enough to pay for pulling them out, but they left them where they were until, soon after the lake was pretty well filled, they removed them where they came out of the water so you couldn't tell where the submerged ones were.

Quite a few fancy boats lost the lower end of their outboards on the tracks - but it was in the Fish & Game half of the lake where the "no visible wake" rule applied, so complaints got the standard "Tough Sh*t A*Hole" reply. The Parks and Recreation half had more liberal rules, and allowed about anything but skinny-dippin'.

John