Tales of Central Florida’s Lake X: Secrecy, man camp, beauty queen, outboard motors and more

A scenic and remote Central Florida lake was transformed long ago into an incognito home of amazing tales.

Its name is X.

“We don’t extend invitations to Lake X often,” said legendary boat motor maker Mercury Marine to the Orlando Sentinel, which promptly accepted one and set about learning more.

The lake has known paranoia and secrecy, a man camp, boats with black engines roaring day and night, a software mogul’s private paradise, a Miss Florida seeking leisure, gorgeous forest with fat deer and an official designation as an environmental jewel.

“You will feel those vibes,” predicted John Litjen, a Mercury lifer, who in 50 years performed every kind of labor in building and testing motors. “And all those ghosts.”

At the lake two years ago, Mercury Marine unveiled its Verado outboard motor. It’s beastly with 12 cylinders and 600 horsepower.

This past week, Mercury showcased future propulsion: Avator electric motors for “small vessels, including aluminum fishing boats, micro skiffs, rigid inflatables, tenders, and small pontoons.”

Sturdy and capable, they feel pleasantly more like a whirring instrument than internal combustion. For upkeep, they require “next to nothing,” said Patrick Reinke, a Mercury manager.

The global push for mobility electrification is only the newest era for the 1,000-acre Lake X.

A key early chapter came in 1957, when Carl Kiekhaefer, a bit of a Henry Ford of powerboats, ventured from Mercury’s Wisconsin home to Central Florida in search of a testing site.

“Mr. Kiekhaefer was looking for a top secret place away from prying eyes of the public and of course his competitors,” Litjen said. “He was flying over Central Florida one time in a rented plane and saw this lake that was kind of wild. It was a pretty good sized lake, though it was sloppy around the borders.”

The lake is where deer and cattle vastly outnumber people 30 miles south of downtown Orlando.

“He found out who owned it and bought it. It was originally called Lake Conlin,” Litjen said. “He changed the name to Lake X, which, of course, stands for experimental.”

Keikhaefer installed security fencing and a guarded gate at the lake with a new name not on maps.

“My father was a very complex individual,” said Fred Kiekhaefer in a YouTube account of Lake X with vintage film clips. “I guess if there is a parallel to his personality, it’s the secrecy, it’s the almost paranoid, hidden work that must go on to keep your competition from knowing what’s coming next.”

The account is titled “Black Engines & White Knuckles.” One of Mercury’s iconic engines, with six cylinders stacked in a “tower of power” 60 horsepower, has black cowlings. Testing on Lake X might involve white-knuckle boatmanship.

Litjen said Kiekhaefer had his own tight grip. He built an employee hotel at the lake and served four meals daily. He prohibited drinking, carousing, fishing and excursions to nearby St. Cloud, then a backwater. Dozens of workers, all men, toiled over and drove boats around the clock.

“I don’t know why you guys want to go to town,” Kitjen recalled the boss saying. “I’ve got everything here for you.”

Kiekhaefer died in 1983. His family sold 10,444 acres surrounding Lake X for $8 million to Kenneth Kirchman, another pioneering entrepreneur who cherished the isolation there. Mercury stayed on a leased lot.

A Florida native, Kirchman resided in Altamonte Springs while his banking software startup flourished into a worldwide empire, the Kirchman Corp.

“Lake X is a very special place,” states a quotation of Kirchman’s on his foundation website. “The natural beauty and serenity cannot be duplicated. Only nature can produce such settings.”

Kirchman took no chances with it. He built a formidable fence topped by three strands of barbed wire. He set up huge wildlife feeders and banned hunting. Deer grew to suggest elk.

“Though well-educated and world-traveled, Mr. Kirchman was known by friends and employees as the quintessential ‘Florida Cracker,” his obituary said. “He and wife Deanna spent much of their leisure time at Lake X.”

Deanna Pitman Kirchman was crowned Miss Florida in 1982. She was soon to compete for Miss America when she drove into a mailbox after an argument with Kirchman, her boyfriend then. The incident played out in newspapers, including an allegation of intoxication that was replaced with recklessness.

With his death in 2007, ownership of Lake X property transferred to the Kenneth Kirchman Foundation, where it remains.

Audubon Florida’s Charles Lee said he visited the property several years ago and was wowed by its forests of longleaf pines that have been painstakingly cared for, and the overall condition of Lake X’s landscape.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Lee recalled thinking.

He was accompanied by Eric Draper, a former head of Audubon Florida and then the Florida Park Service director.

Draper took a hard look at a portion of Lake X shoreline as a candidate for a new state park. It wasn’t to be. The park service is constrained by a tight budget.

“I put a lot of work into that and was very disappointed,” Draper said. “But it’s still there and probably not a lost opportunity.”

Florida’s program that acquires environmental land ranks Lake X highly.

It is the source of the Econlockhatchee River, an inky serpent coiling across Osceola, Orange and Seminole counties.

The “sloppy around the borders” character that Mercury lifer Litjen spotted in Lake X’s shoreline is due to the adjoining Cat Island Swamp.

The lake’s dark, tannic water, which is clear like tea, flows some days north to the St. Johns River, according to wind and storms, and some days south to the Kissimmee River.

Lake X’s environment, observed officials, is “dominated by large cypress swamps, intermixed with mesic pine flatwoods (including scrubby and wet flatwoods) dotted with smaller dome swamps and depression marshes.”

Translation: treasurable.

Many maps never dropped the lake’s original Conlin name. That doesn’t exorcize the vibes and ghosts of Lake X.

Mercury engineering manager Ken Eckert said it’s unlikely anyone around St. Cloud and that part of Osceola County would recognize Lake Conlin.

“They know Lake X,” he said. “It’s famous.”