100 Fun Facts About The Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario

Which is the only one of the five Great Lakes that lies entirely within the United States?

Michigan lies wholly in the US because the 1783 Treaty of Paris ran the new border through the middle of the other four lakes, leaving this one entirely on the American side.

Roughly what share of the world's surface fresh water do the Great Lakes contain?

21% is the usual figure: about six quadrillion gallons, enough to cover the contiguous United States in more than nine feet of water.

Which lake is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, though only third by volume?

Superior ranks only third by volume, behind Baikal in Siberia and Tanganyika in East Africa; the Caspian Sea is bigger but brackish.

Which two Great Lakes are hydrologically a single body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac?

Michigan and Huron sit at the same level, and geographers sometimes count them as one lake, Michigan-Huron, which by that reckoning is the world's largest freshwater lake by area.

Which Great Lake is the shallowest, the smallest by volume and the warmest?

Erie averages only about 60 feet deep, so it warms quickly in summer and freezes over more readily in winter than its deeper neighbours.

Which Great Lake has the smallest surface area?

Ontario covers about 7,340 square miles, the least of the five, yet its 802-foot maximum depth lets it hold more than three times the water of the next-smallest lake.

The Great Lakes began to form at the end of the last glacial period, as which ice sheet receded?

The Laurentide Ice Sheet carved the basins and its meltwater filled them, creating vanished ancestors such as Lake Algonquin and Glacial Lake Iroquois.

French explorers named Superior 'lac supérieur', by which they meant what?

The upper lake: the French reached it by way of Lake Huron and named it for lying above that lake, and English speakers later borrowed the word as Superior.

Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha uses which name for Superior, borrowed from Ojibwe?

Gitche Gumee is Longfellow's spelling of the Ojibwe Gichigami; he drew the poem's Ojibwe names and legends largely from the books of the Indian agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.

Water that flows into Lake Superior stays there for roughly how long before draining out?

Two centuries is about right: Superior's retention time is 191 years, because the flow through its single outlet is tiny next to the lake's volume.

Lake Erie is named for the Erie people, the French 'Cat Nation'; their name, erielhonan, is usually translated as what?

Long tail is the usual reading of erielhonan, though whether the animal meant was a cougar or a raccoon is disputed; the Erie themselves were broken up by the Iroquois in the 1650s.

The name Michigan is believed to come from the Ojibwe word mishigami, which means what?

Great water, or 'big lake', is the usual gloss of mishigami, though dictionaries hedge it with a 'perhaps'; the name belonged to the lake long before it passed to the state.

The Hurons, after whom Lake Huron is named, are also known by what name?

Wyandot comes from Wendat, the people's own name; 'Huron' was a French label, and after Iroquois attacks broke up their confederacy around 1649, survivors regrouped as the Wyandot.

Which Lake Huron island is the largest island in any lake in the world?

Manitoulin's eastern end, Wiikwemkoong, remains unceded land: its people refused to sign the 1862 treaty that opened the rest of the island to settlers.

Which island, a national park, is the largest in Superior and the second largest in the Great Lakes?

Isle Royale became a national park in 1940; wolves reached it across an ice bridge from Canada in the late 1940s, and their struggle with its moose is now the longest-running predator-prey study anywhere.

Georgian Bay, sometimes called the 'sixth Great Lake', is an arm of which of the five?

Huron's Georgian Bay is nearly walled off from the main lake by the Bruce Peninsula and a chain of islands, which is why it can pass for a lake of its own.

Which US state borders both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario?

New York is the only state on both lakes; neighbouring Pennsylvania reaches only Erie, on a wedge of shore it bought from the federal government in 1792 that holds its one Great Lakes port.

Le Griffon, the first known sailing ship on the upper Great Lakes, was built in 1679 for which explorer?

René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle had the Griffon built near Niagara in 1679; she vanished that September on her return from Green Bay with a cargo of furs.

Which body of water briefly became America's official 'sixth Great Lake' in March 1998?

Champlain got the status from one line in a Sea Grant funding bill that President Clinton signed on 6 March 1998; the definition let colleges on its shores apply for the programme's research money.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Superior on November 10 of which year?

She went down on 10 November 1975 in a Superior gale about 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, taking all 29 crew; launched in 1958, she was then the largest ship on the lakes.

What cargo was the Edmund Fitzgerald carrying on her final voyage?

Iron ore pellets, known as taconite, filled her hold; the Coast Guard's inquiry concluded that water got in through poorly sealed hatches and flooded that cargo hold until she sank.

What calm last message did Captain Ernest McSorley radio before the Edmund Fitzgerald vanished?

'We are holding our own' answered the freighter Arthur M. Anderson, which was trailing behind and lost the Fitzgerald from radar minutes later.

Which Canadian singer-songwriter turned the sinking of the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald into a hit 1976 ballad?

Gordon Lightfoot's ballad made the Fitzgerald the most famous wreck on the lakes; her bell, raised in 1995, now stands in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum as a memorial to the crew.

The stretch of Superior's shore between Grand Marais, Michigan and Whitefish Point is nicknamed what?

Graveyard of the Great Lakes is no exaggeration: storms, fog and heavy traffic meet here, and west of Whitefish Bay a ship caught in a gale has no natural harbour to run for.

What nickname was given to the November 1913 storm, the deadliest in Great Lakes history?

The White Hurricane caught the Weather Bureau off guard with its force; on Lake Huron alone, eight ships went down with every man aboard in a single day.

Niagara Falls is really three waterfalls; which one, straddling the US–Canada border, is the largest?

Horseshoe Falls carries about 90% of the river's flow, and that force keeps cutting the cliff back: the falls now stand about seven miles upstream of where they began.

The Niagara River, which creates the falls, drains which of the Great Lakes into which?

Erie to Ontario: the Niagara River runs north between them and drops more than 320 feet on the way, which is why Ontario lies so far below the other four lakes.

What was the day job of Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to ride a barrel over Niagara Falls and live?

Schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor made the plunge on her birthday in 1901 in search of fame and fortune; she survived, but the money she hoped for never came.

What reduced Niagara Falls to a trickle for more than a day in March 1848?

An ice jam upstream held back the river for more than a day; in 1969 engineers built a dam that left the American Falls dry for months while they studied the rock beneath.

The Soo Locks, which let ships pass between Superior and the lower lakes, are built on which river?

St. Marys River tumbles through rapids as it leaves the lake, so travellers long had to portage around them; the first modern lock, finished in 1855, let ships ride past instead.

The Mackinac Bridge, opened in 1957, connects which two landmasses?

The five-mile bridge spans the Straits of Mackinac to join Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas; before 'Mighty Mac' opened in 1957, car ferries were the only link.

President Eisenhower and which other head of state formally opened the St. Lawrence Seaway in June 1959?

Queen Elizabeth II came as Queen of Canada, head of state of the Seaway's other builder, and opened it beside Eisenhower and Prime Minister Diefenbaker on 26 June 1959.

Which port is the westernmost terminus of the St. Lawrence Seaway system?

Duluth sits at the far western tip of the lakes, more than 2,300 miles by water from the Atlantic, so ocean-going 'salties' can load cargo in the very middle of the continent.

Which Canadian canal lifts ships up the Niagara Escarpment so they can bypass Niagara Falls?

Welland Canal traffic climbs the escarpment through eight locks; St. Catharines businessman William Hamilton Merritt drove the first canal through by 1829, and it has been rebuilt three times since.

The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, linked Lake Erie to which river?

Hudson-bound barges gave the Midwest a water route to the Atlantic, pulling trade away from rival ports such as Philadelphia and turning Manhattan into the country's great commercial centre.

Opponents mocked the Erie Canal as 'Clinton's Big Ditch', after a governor with which first name?

DeWitt Clinton pushed the canal through as governor; at the 1825 opening he rode the first boat from Buffalo to the coast and emptied a keg of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic.

A June 1969 fire on which Ohio waterway, flowing into Erie, helped spark the US environmental movement?

The Cuyahoga had burned at least a dozen times since 1868; the 1969 blaze lasted about half an hour, and Time's famous photo actually showed a bigger 1952 fire.

Which city reversed the flow of its river in 1900 so that its sewage stopped draining into Lake Michigan?

Chicago opened its Sanitary and Ship Canal in January 1900, turning the river inland toward the Mississippi so the city's waste no longer fouled the lake it drew its drinking water from.

Zebra mussels, first detected in the Great Lakes in 1988, are thought to have arrived how?

In ships' ballast water is the accepted route: a freighter from Europe probably flushed out the larvae, and the mussels now filter so much water that parts of the lakes run far clearer.

Which fish did Michigan first stock in Lake Michigan in 1966 to curb the alewife explosion?

Coho salmon smolts went into two Lake Michigan streams in 1966 to prey on the alewives; chinook followed in 1967, and a sport fishery for Pacific salmon grew up around both.

An electric barrier in an Illinois shipping canal is meant to keep which invasive fish out of Lake Michigan?

Asian carp have taken over stretches of the Mississippi river system, and the canal is the man-made link through which they could swim on into Lake Michigan.

Lake-effect snow forms when what happens?

Cold air crosses warmer open water and loads up with moisture; the downwind regions that get buried, such as the Tug Hill Plateau east of Lake Ontario, are called snowbelts.

Which city on Lake Erie had the largest population at the 2020 census?

Cleveland had about 372,000 people at the 2020 census, well ahead of Buffalo and Toledo; its growth took off once the Ohio and Erie Canal was finished in 1832, tying the lake to the Ohio River.

Near which Ohio island village did Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron beat the British in the Battle of Lake Erie?

Perry sailed from Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island to meet the British on 10 September; his victory gave the US control of the lake and the dispatch 'We have met the enemy and they are ours.'

The French explorer believed to be the first European to reach Lake Michigan, possibly in 1634, was who?

Jean Nicolet reached Green Bay and made a friendship treaty with the Ho-Chunk; he is said to have worn a Chinese silk robe in case he met Asians, a story historians now question.

Good Morning America viewers voted which Great Lakes shoreline the 'Most Beautiful Place in America' in 2011?

Sleeping Bear Dunes won the 2011 poll; in the Ojibwe legend behind the name, a mother bear swam the lake and lay down on the bluff to wait for two cubs that never reached shore.

The first 1,000-foot lake freighter, launched in 1972, was named what?

The Stewart J. Cort's bow and stern were built at Pascagoula, Mississippi as a short vessel nicknamed 'Stubby', which sailed to Erie, Pennsylvania to be joined to a new 1,000-foot hull's midsection.

Which Lake Ontario city, grown from a 1673 French fort, was the first capital of the united Province of Canada?

Kingston became the united Province of Canada's first capital in 1841, but within about three years the government left for Montreal; the town had long been judged too exposed to American attack.

The Rush-Bagot Treaty, which led to naval disarmament on the Great Lakes, followed which war?

The 1817 Rush-Bagot agreement, signed two years after the War of 1812 ended, limited each side to a handful of small armed vessels and led to an unfortified border on the lakes.

Roughly how many islands are scattered throughout the Great Lakes?

35,000 is the usual count, and tens of thousands of them crowd the eastern shore of a single bay, an archipelago known as the Thirty Thousand Islands.

Which future US president trained as a Navy pilot on a coal-fired aircraft carrier on Lake Michigan in World War II?

George H. W. Bush was one of 17,820 pilots trained on USS Sable and USS Wolverine, converted excursion steamers that were the Navy's only freshwater, side-wheel carriers.

Which Dr. Seuss book lost a line about Lake Erie's pollution after researchers told the author the lake was recovering?

The Lorax, published in 1971, kept the reference for more than fourteen years, until two Ohio Sea Grant researchers wrote to Seuss about the clean-up.

Which Russian lake contains more water than all five Great Lakes combined, thanks to a depth of more than 1,600 metres?

Baikal plunges 1,642 metres, deeper than any other lake, so it outdoes all five lakes together despite a surface only slightly larger than Belgium.

Which form of transport has Mackinac Island restricted since the late 1800s, after complaints from carriage drivers?

Motor vehicles were restricted because automobiles startled the island's horses. The ban still stands, with exceptions for emergency and service vehicles and for snowmobiles in winter.

Which actress became a major movie star with her top-billed role in the 1953 thriller Niagara, shot at the falls?

Marilyn Monroe took top billing over Joseph Cotten, and Niagara became one of 20th Century Fox's biggest box office hits of the year.

Which five-letter word helps schoolchildren remember the names of all five Great Lakes by their first letters?

HOMES stands for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior, a word picked because it is easy to remember, not because the letters follow any order on the map.

Which Ohio city warned half a million people off its tap water in 2014 after toxic algae bloomed in Lake Erie?

Toledo draws its water through an intake pipe a few miles offshore, and the bloom of toxic algae formed directly above it.

Which inventor's alternating-current work lay behind the generators of the 1895 Adams Power Plant at Niagara Falls?

Nikola Tesla's work, with that of Westinghouse engineer Benjamin Lamme, shaped the generators of the world's first large-scale AC plant, whose ten machines eventually delivered 50,000 horsepower.

Which Midwestern city takes its name from the French word for strait, after the narrow river it was founded on in 1701?

Detroit grew from Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. The French knew the river as the strait of Lake Erie.

Which city on Lake Ontario's northwestern shore was the town of York until it was renamed in 1834?

Toronto was founded as the town of York in 1793, beside a natural harbour sheltered by a long sand-bar peninsula; its waterfront now runs 46 kilometres along the lake.

Which name have Niagara Falls tour boats carried since the first was launched as a border-crossing ferry in 1846?

Maid of the Mist turned to sightseeing only after a suspension bridge opened in 1848 and took away its ferry traffic, so the owners plotted a route closer to the falls.

Which African lake, drained only by the Nile, is the largest freshwater lake by surface area outside the Great Lakes?

Victoria covers about 59,947 square kilometres, which also makes it the largest tropical lake on Earth; only one of the Great Lakes is bigger.

The five Great Lakes together cover roughly the same surface area as which European country?

The United Kingdom is the usual yardstick: the lakes' surface totals about 94,250 square miles, and the whole basin they drain is about the size of Britain and France combined.

Which city on the western shore of Lake Michigan, built where three rivers meet, is the most populous in Wisconsin?

Milwaukee lies at the confluence of the Menomonee, the Kinnickinnic and the river that shares its name; one theory traces that name to a Meskwaki term for a gathering place.

Which Wisconsin city stands at the mouth of the Fox River, at the head of a long Lake Michigan inlet?

Green Bay is far better known for its NFL team: the Packers were founded in the city in 1919.

Which city at the eastern end of Lake Erie boomed after being chosen as the western terminus of the Erie Canal?

Buffalo expanded its harbor to win the terminus from its rival Black Rock, then grew into the main inland port between the lakes and the ocean.

Which eel-like saltwater parasite slipped into the Great Lakes through shipping canals and ravaged the lake trout?

Sea lamprey clamp on to other fish to feed, and a single one can kill about 40 pounds of fish during its 12 to 18 months of feeding.

Which game fish, a mainstay of Lake Erie's commercial and sport catch, is known as pickerel in parts of Canada?

Walleye are named for pearlescent eyes that see well in low light, which is why anglers so often go after them at night.

Which Ohio amusement park, famed for its roller coasters, fills a peninsula jutting into Lake Erie at Sandusky?

Cedar Point opened in 1870, when the lake's south shore was becoming a holiday spot for the new middle class; the peninsula was named for its cedar trees and first known for fishing.

What was raised from the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck in 1995 and replaced by a replica engraved with the crew's names?

The ship's bell was brought up by a diver in an atmospheric diving suit and became the heart of a memorial at Whitefish Point to the 29 men lost.

Water flowing out of Lake Ontario down the St. Lawrence River eventually reaches which body of water?

The Atlantic is where the whole chain drains: the St. Lawrence carries the outflow of all five lakes through the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the open sea.

Through the Illinois Waterway, barges can travel from Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico by way of which river?

The Mississippi link is man-made at its top end: canals and altered rivers at Chicago join two basins that nature kept apart, and a chain of locks steps barges down from the lake.

Which archipelago straddles the US–Canada border where Lake Ontario empties into the St. Lawrence River?

Thousand Islands undersells it: the archipelago counts 1,864 islands, and a salad dressing is presumed to take its name from the region.

Which acrobat crossed the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope in 1859, later pausing midway to cook an omelette?

Charles Blondin repeated the 1,100-foot crossing blindfolded, on stilts and with his manager on his back, all 160 feet above the water.

Which Niagara Falls neighborhood, built beside a chemical company's buried waste, was demolished in a Superfund cleanup?

Love Canal was named for an abandoned canal where Hooker Chemical dumped 19,800 tonnes of byproducts in the 1940s, before selling the land to the local school district for $1.

Which Ontario city on Lake Superior was created in 1970 by merging the rival cities of Fort William and Port Arthur?

Thunder Bay ended a rivalry that began when the railway arrived; Fort William had been a Montreal fur company's mid-continent depot since 1803.

Which shallow lake between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, averaging just 11 feet deep, is left out of the five Great Lakes?

St. Clair covers only about 430 square miles, and a 30-foot shipping channel has to be maintained through it; French explorers named it for Saint Clare of Assisi.

Which excursion steamer rolled over while tied to its Chicago River dock in 1915, killing 844 people?

Eastland was already top-heavy, and the lifeboats added under a law passed after the Titanic disaster may have made her even less stable.

Which stretch of Lake Michigan's southern shore went from national lakeshore to America's 61st national park in 2019?

Indiana Dunes runs for about 15 miles along the lake, and owes its protection to a 1966 compromise that paired the preserved shore with a new port.

Which stretch of sandstone cliffs on Lake Superior became America's first national lakeshore in 1966?

Pictured Rocks takes its name from the colourful sandstone cliffs near Munising, whose sheer walls make the rich fishing waters below dangerous for canoes and other open boats.

Which Wisconsin peninsula, known for its cherry orchards, separates a long bay from the main body of Lake Michigan?

Door takes its name from the dangerous passage off its tip, known in French as Porte des Morts, which translates as Death's Door.

Which Ontario peninsula, tipped by the town of Tobermory, carries the Niagara Escarpment out into Lake Huron?

Bruce holds the largest remaining stretch of forest in southern Ontario and some of the oldest trees in eastern North America.

Which bay of Lake Huron forms the gap between the Thumb of Michigan's mitten and the rest of the hand?

Saginaw Bay is shallower and warmer than the open lake, so it supports a different community of fish from the main basin.

Which Lake Superior archipelago off northern Wisconsin is famous for sea caves that fill with icicles in winter?

Apostle Islands number 22 rather than twelve, and the name first appeared in print on a French map published in 1744.

Which national park on Lake Erie, a funnel for migrating birds, is the southernmost tip of mainland Canada?

Point Pelee lies at the same latitude as Rome and Barcelona, and sits where two major flyways cross, so about 350 species of migratory birds have been recorded there.

Which Ontario port wraps around the western tip of Lake Ontario and grew up around the Stelco and Dofasco steel mills?

Hamilton was first known simply as The Head-of-the-Lake for its position, and its two steel giants were founded within two years of each other, in 1910 and 1912.

Which steel city on Lake Michigan's southern shore was founded in 1906 and named after U.S. Steel's chairman?

Gary honours Elbert Henry Gary, a lawyer who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation, which built the town to serve its mills.

Which Minnesota lighthouse, perched on a cliff above Lake Superior, was built after a 1905 storm damaged 29 ships?

Split Rock was so cut off that all its building materials arrived by water and had to be lifted to the top of the cliff by crane.

What nickname do Great Lakes sailors give the ocean-going ships that reach the lakes through the St. Lawrence Seaway?

Salties often arrive only part-loaded, because fresh water is less buoyant than the sea and their deeper hulls would otherwise ride too low.

What is the name for the wind-driven sloshing that piles water up at one end of Lake Erie during storms?

A seiche hits Lake Erie hardest because the lake's long axis lines up with the prevailing winds; forecasters issue low-water advisories when a big one is likely.

Which canal, opened in 1832 and listed by UNESCO, links Lake Ontario at Kingston with the Ottawa River?

Rideau is the oldest continuously operated canal system in North America; its locks lift boats 83 metres from the Ottawa River before dropping them 50 metres to the lake.

What is the meaning of 'La Mer Douce', the name early French visitors often gave Lake Huron?

The fresh-water sea matches one reading of Karegnondi, the name on a 1656 French map, which has been translated as Freshwater Sea or simply as lake.

Which landscape architect campaigned from the 1860s to preserve the land around Niagara Falls as a public park?

Frederick Law Olmsted helped found the Niagara Falls Association in 1883 to stop private exploitation of the falls, and the Niagara Reservation, the oldest US state park, followed two years later.

Which Michigan peninsula jutting into Lake Superior was home to the first major copper mining boom in the United States?

Keweenaw lava flows hold the only rock on Earth with large, recoverable deposits of 97 percent pure native copper, and mines worked them from the 1840s to the 1960s.

Which freighter, sailing close behind the Edmund Fitzgerald on her last night, reported her loss to the Coast Guard?

Arthur M. Anderson was the last ship in contact with her, and became the first rescue vessel on the scene in a vain search for survivors.

Which island, the largest in Lake Michigan, was ruled from 1848 to 1856 by the self-proclaimed Mormon king James Strang?

Beaver Island's monarchy ended with Strang's assassination in 1856, after which Irish American fishermen returned, expelled his followers and took the island back.

Which Montreal fur-trading firm gathered each July at Grand Portage, and later Fort William, on Lake Superior?

The North West Company traded from 1779 to 1821, and the lakeside depot was where its city agents met the wintering partners who ran the trade in the fur country.

Which canal route links Lake Ontario with Georgian Bay, hauling boats over one stretch on a marine railway?

The Trent–Severn Waterway was finished only in 1920, delayed by World War I; its 44 locks include hydraulic lift locks at Peterborough and Kirkfield.

Which vessel, launched in 1818 and wrecked in a gale three years later, was the first steamboat to run on Lake Erie?

Walk-in-the-Water was launched sideways in May 1818 and went on to become the first steamboat on Lake Huron and Lake Michigan as well.

Which invasive mussel, named after an extinct kind of zebra, was first found in North America in Lake Erie in 1989?

Quagga mussels come from the Dnipro River in Ukraine, and by 2021 they were so abundant that they had become the main regulator of phosphorus in the lower four lakes.