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This photo by Betty Sensat, thought to be from around 1950, shows the reflecting pool that once accompanied LSU’s Greek Amphitheatre. Today, all that remains is the “Enchanted Forest,” its original setting.

What happened to LSU’s Greek Reflecting Pool?

Answer: Progress. Funding. Mosquitoes.

When the state bought the property for LSU, the Olmsted Brothers, the architectural gurus behind the campus layout, thought an informal pond would be the best choice for the low-lying grounds.

That pond would become the Greek Reflecting Pool, which decades later would spur many more questions than answers.

Professors and pundits speculate that sometime between the 1940s and the 1960s, the pool took center stage in what is now “The Enchanted Forest” behind the Greek Amphitheater. The rectangular pond was surrounded by a formal garden, and a statue of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto stood at the north end.

Though the scene sounds like something fit for a Better Homes & Gardens pictoral, the pool met its demise.

“It was a money pit … a maintenance nightmare,” says Jason P. Soileau, assistant director of the University Office of Campus Planning. He emphasized the fact that the pond bred mosquitoes and became stagnant and that leaves had to be netted out constantly.

So LSU officials had it filled in with soil and sand.

What happened with the de Soto statue is not quite clear.

Old Daily Reveille articles say it was crushed and flung into the Mississippi River. One detective, LSU professor and architect Michael Desmond, says, “students toppled it.”

So what is left for the archaeologists of tomorrow?

“There are probably remnants underground, but I don’t know for a fact,” Soileau says.

Might LSU recreate the pool? “No, the trees have grown in,” Soileau says. However, the Office of Campus Planning has thrown around ideas to renovate “The Enchanted Forest” into a park-like setting.

So, you might have that to look forward to.