What started as routine drilling ended in a geological nightmare. Lake Peigneur collapsed into the ground, swallowing barges, land, and a massive drilling rig—leaving behind Louisiana’s deepest lake.

November 20, 1980, is a new day at Lake Peigneur in Louisiana. Some 9 miles north of the Vermilion Bay in the Gulf of Mexico, a charming, calm lake is a popular resort for fishermen and nature ...

Lake Peigneur used to drain into Vermilion Bay via the Delcambre Canal, but once the lake had emptied into the mine, the canal changed direction and salt water from the Gulf of Mexico flooded ...

In 1980, Texaco drilled down to look for oil beneath Lake Peigneur. A little too far down. The mistake drained the entire lake like a bathtub, creating an enormous whirlpool that consumed barges ...

The lake — home to 4,000 residents — made headlines in 1980 when a drilling rig pushed through the top of a salt mine and punched a hole in the bottom of the lake, draining the water and ...

Lake Peigneur, the site of one of the state’s most spectacular industrial disasters in 1980, kept coming up in my conversations with residents of Bayou Corne, the Cajun community in south ...

The morning of November 21, 1980, started as an unremarkable one on Lake Peigneur, Louisiana. ... Suddenly, the hole was now an enormous drain, a 400m-wide swirling vortex.

The Miraculous Vanishing of Lake Peigneur: The Real True Story of a Lake That Disappeared by Allan Wolf and Jose Pimienta is a new nonfiction middle grade graphic novel. It tells the story of "the ...

The warring factions in the battle over oil and gas activity at Acadiana’s Lake Peigneur called for a timeout Wednesday at the State Capitol. Senate Bill 585 went before the Louisiana House ...

Lake Peigneur is located in Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico. Before 1980, it was an approximately 10-foot deep fresh water lake with an island in the middle. Next to it, and partially under it ...

The salt beneath Lake Peigneur was formed by the evaporation of a previous body of salty water. Some of the salt is 125m years old, meaning it was laid down during the heyday of the dinosaurs.