Lake Elkhorn

The 19th annual Lake Elkhorn Festival is set to bring auctions, entertainment, games for children and for adults Saturday in Owen Brown village.The festival on the pavilion side of the lake on Broken Land Parkway will be from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.Highlights will include a fishing contest, a pet show, pony rides, martial arts demonstrations, arts and crafts exhibits, auctions of items donated by local merchants and performances by local dance groups, musicians and...

A 28-year-old woman was raped yesterday as she walked the bike path at Lake Elkhorn in East Columbia, county police said.Police said the woman was walking along the lake's path in the Village of Owen Brown around 11 a.m. when she was attacked by a white man, believed to be 18 years old. The assailant was about 5-foot-9 with shoulder length black hair and dark clothing, police said.Columbia's 60 miles of pathways have been the scene of crimes in the past. In 1988, several students reported they were victims of rape and indecent exposure as they walked along the Lake Elkhorn path and another pathway also in Owen Brown.

The long-planned dredging of Lake Elkhorn, Columbia's largest of three man-made lakes, is expected to begin in late August. Diana Kelley, contract administrator for the Columbia Association, said timing of the work will allow the association's summer Nature Camp to be held at the pavilion near the Lake Elkhorn dam. The $5 million project, discussed and planned over the past five years, is to be followed next year by the $6 million dredging at Lake Kittamaqundi,...

A still-to-be-determined event will replace one of Columbia's longest-running annual festivals, but not before that festival's last hurrah in September. The Lake Elkhorn Festival, which was started in 1974, will end after this year because of lack of attendance and volunteers, said Owen Brown village officials. "We're going to rethink the festival and, hopefully, come up with a new concept as to what we want to do for the community," said Neil Dorsey, chairman of the Owen Brown Village Board.

A Columbia wildlife committee plans to work with an Owen Brown village group on a proposal to protect a pond and wetlands at Lake Elkhorn as a refuge for swans and other wildlife.The Columbia Association's ecologist and members of the Columbia Waterfowl and Habitat Advisory Committee have observed that the two native swans at Lake Elkhorn and blue herons, mallards and geese tend to gravitate toward Forbay Pond, a natural, secluded habitat. Also, CA plans to create more wetlands around the pond to make up for pathway construction in other open space areas, said Charles "Chick" Rhodehamel, the association's ecologist.

The Rouse Co. built Columbia as a suburban utopia, complete with manufactured lakes and scenic pathways. Now some residents are concerned that a different kind of master builder is chopping away at its beauty.A pair of beavers -- those four-legged, furry builders with chisel-like teeth and webbed hind feet -- are gnawing and felling saplings and other trees along the picturesque Lake Elkhorn in Columbia's Village of Owen Brown.That activity concerns longtime Lake Elkhorn walkers William Ewart and Norman La Cholter, both of Oakland Mills.

If it seems that someone's pulled the plug on Lake Elkhorn, if the water level seems unbelievably low -- well, it is.Since last month, the shoreline of the 37-acre lake has been receding, leveling off almost 2 feet, baring mud banks and rocks, and prompting concern and phone calls among area residents.Blame it on the Columbia Association, which has lowered the waterlevel 18 inches to repair cracks in the concrete spillway that facesBroken Land Parkway.The spillway -- or the waterfall -- sufferedmuch damage last summer because of the drought, according to Chick Rhodelhamel, CA's environmentalist.

LAKE ELKHORN is a shimmering jewel in the southeast corner of Columbia. Encircled by a winding path that runs along the shore, the lake is a fine place to be -- especially on these fresh days of spring.As the new season takes hold, warm weather and April showers awaken the lake's flora. Grass deepens to a richer shade of green, and tulips and daisies begin to push up through the litter of leaves at the edge of the surrounding woods.From 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, a volunteer cleanup is scheduled to help keep the lake in Owen Brown in the pristine state that draws admirers from all Columbia's villages.

The raucous quacking and honking of mallards and geese is ignored by two bone-white birds sunning on the dock of Columbia's Lake Elkhorn.The graceful pair -- trumpling swans -- are the new kids on the block.They represent a long-planned attempt at reintroducing trumpeter swans, the largest of all waterfowl and decimated by American settlers, to the Chesapeake region.Scientists believe if they can get the trumplings -- a cross of two other kinds of swans familiar with the East Coast flyways -- to take hold, the trumpeters could follow.