The world has three asphalt lakes, and the biggest of these is Pitch Lake in southwestern Trinidad. Sir Walter Raleigh brought two forms of New World tar back to England with him in the 1500s — tobacco and the asphalt from Pitch Lake, which he used to caulk his leaking ship. That’s right: asphalt is not just a concoction invented by the Hot Tar Asphalt Company for road paving; it’s an actual geological substance which is mined, then hauled off to other shores to build more parking lots.
Parking lots are copy cats of Pitch Lake.
Page Eight, Issue Eleven
The Asphalt Lake of Trinidad
