Lake Artemesia has a storied history.
Like all lakes in Maryland, this one is man-made.
It all started in the mid-1800s, when a deep pit was left behind by workers digging for stone while constructing tracks for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s Washington Branch. The unsightly quarry caught the attention of Edwin A. Newman, a Washington-based real estate developer who saw the surrounding land as an opportunity.
Newman set out to turn the area into an exclusive resort-style suburban community called Lakeland. He turned the extraction pit into a seven-acre lake, which he named after his wife, Clara Artemesia Newman. The lake, stocked with pleasure boats and black bass, aimed to attract Washingtonians to Lakeland, which Newman marketed as a comfortable neighborhood near convenient transportation.
Newman’s resort dream did not pan out the way he had hoped, but part of the original lake found a second life as a goldfish farm.
In the early 1900s, Henry Bishop’s Baltimore Gold Fish Co. leased the space and began breeding goldfish and some rare species in nearby ponds and in Lake Artemesia. The location of the railroad made it easy to ship fish all across the country, helping Bishop grow his company and earning him the nickname “Gold Fish King.”
“The original land was comprised of a few ponds,” Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) Park Ranger Ben Sweet said.
In 1914, the federal Bureau of Fisheries leased Bishop’s ponds to raise bass and other freshwater sport fish, according to The Washington Post. The operation had become so successful that the federal government considered purchasing the land to expand its fish-breeding venture, with Herbert Hoover, then U.S. secretary of commerce, inspecting the operation in person. That transaction never took place.
Today, College Park locals can see that era memorialized on the mural “The Last Goldfish” on Baltimore Avenue on the side of the strip where Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen is located.
By the early 1900s, Lakeland had evolved into a thriving community of Black families. However, the community was undermined when a federal urban renewal plan demolished family homes in the 1960s and ’70s, displacing 104 of 150 households and replacing the neighborhood’s unique character with a mix of subsidized townhouses, student apartments and senior housing.
The modern Lake Artemesia began as an effort between Newman’s daughter and the M-NCPPC.
“It was land that Artemesia N. Drefs had inherited from her father,” Sweet said.
In 1972, Drefs donated six acres of her family land to the M-NCPPC for a recreational area for the surrounding community.
“It was designed to create a connection between the different communities,” Sweet said.
In the late 1980s, when the Metro line was being constructed, builders excavated sand and gravel from Lake Artemesia to build the rail bed for the College Park-University of Maryland and Greenbelt stations. In return for the construction materials, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority constructed a 38-acre lake and 87-plus-acre natural site just east of the original Lake Artemesia.
In 2025, M-NCPPC changed the park’s name to Lake Artemesia Natural Area at Lakeland, which Lakeland residents proposed and the College Park City Council supported.
Beyond its beauty and complicated history, the area has drawn unwanted attention five times since 2017, when bodies were discovered in the wooded areas around the bike and walking trails.
Most recently, a 2025 investigation led to the discovery of the remains of a missing 14-year-old from the District in November. Police described the death as gang related.