50 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?

The other four form the water boundary between the US and Canada; Michigan is also the largest lake by area that sits inside a single country.

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

That is about six quadrillion US gallons; spread evenly across North America the water would stand five feet deep.

Which lake is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area?

By volume it ranks only third, 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?

They sit at the same elevation, and geographers sometimes call the combined 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?

Its western basin is so shallow that, as one account puts it, the slightest breeze can kick up lively waves.

Which Great Lake has the smallest surface area?

Despite its small footprint it holds more water than Erie, and its Rochester Basin plunges to 802 feet.

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

The glaciers carved the basins and their meltwater filled them, creating vanished ancestors such as Lake Algonquin and Glacial Lake Iroquois along the way.

The name Superior comes from French explorers who called it 'lac supérieur'. What did they mean by it?

It was simply above Lake Huron in elevation on their route in; the Ojibwe name, Gichigami, means 'great water'.

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

It is a rendering of the Ojibwe Gichigami, 'great water'; the same spelling turns up in a famous 1976 folk ballad about a lost freighter.

Because of its huge volume, water entering Lake Superior stays there on average for roughly how long?

There is enough water in the lake to cover all of North and South America to a depth of about a foot.

The name Erie derives from an Iroquoian word meaning what?

The Erie people who gave the lake its name were destroyed or absorbed by the Iroquois in the 17th century.

The word Michigan is believed to come from an Ojibwe word meaning what?

The word is 'mishigami'; the Straits of Mackinac take their name from Michilimackinac, understood to mean Place of the Great Turtle.

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

The French themselves often called the lake La Mer Douce, the fresh-water sea; a 1656 map labels it Karegnondi.

The largest island in any inland body of water in the world sits in Lake Huron. What is it called?

It is big enough to hold Lake Manitou, the world's largest lake on a freshwater island, which in turn holds islands of its own.

The largest island in Superior, and the second largest in the whole Great Lakes, is which national park?

The park was established in 1940, has no permanent residents, and is famous for the long-running study of its wolves and moose.

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

Its 30,000 Islands inspired the Group of Seven painters, and Samuel de Champlain overwintered on its shores in 1615.

Which US state has the longest Great Lakes shoreline?

Michigan touches four of the five lakes; walking every Great Lakes shoreline would be about the same as going halfway round the equator.

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

It was also the first ship to sink in Lake Michigan, and rival wrecks found in 2004 and 2014 have both been claimed as the Griffon.

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

The clause in a Sea Grant reauthorisation bill was signed by President Clinton and quietly reversed after Midwestern outrage.

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

All 29 crew were lost and no bodies were recovered; when launched in 1958 she was the largest ship on the lakes and remains the largest to have sunk there.

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

For 17 years she hauled the iron-ore pellets from Minnesota's Iron Range to steel mills in Detroit and Toledo; loading took about four and a half hours.

What were the last words radioed by the Fitzgerald's captain, Ernest McSorley, before the ship vanished?

He was answering the freighter Arthur M. Anderson, which was trailing behind and lost the Fitzgerald from radar minutes later.

Which Canadian singer turned the Fitzgerald's sinking into a hit ballad in 1976?

He wrote it after reading a Newsweek article titled 'The Cruelest Month'; the ship's bell, raised in 1995, is displayed at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

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

More ships have been lost around Whitefish Point than anywhere else on the lake, and the wrecks are now protected as an underwater preserve.

Roughly how many died in the November 1913 'White Hurricane', the deadliest storm in Great Lakes history?

Nineteen ships were destroyed and nineteen more stranded, with Lake Huron taking the worst of it on November 9.

Niagara is a group of three waterfalls. Which is the largest?

About 90% of the river's summer flow goes over Horseshoe, which straddles the border and is the most powerful waterfall in North America.

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

The drop is why Ontario sits far lower than the other four lakes and why a canal had to be dug to bypass the falls.

Who became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, in October 1901?

Annie Edson Taylor sent her cat over first to test the barrel; she survived and told reporters 'No one ought ever do that again.'

The only recorded time Niagara Falls stopped flowing was caused by what, in March 1848?

The falls ran dry for hours; in 1969 engineers deliberately diverted the river away from the American Falls for months to study erosion.

The Soo Locks let ships pass between Superior and the lower lakes. On which waterway are they built?

The first locks opened in 1855; the Army Corps of Engineers runs them today and charges no toll.

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

Before 'Mighty Mac' the only link was a ferry; the bridge is still the longest suspension span between anchorages in the Western Hemisphere.

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

The Queen, in her role as Queen of Canada, joined Prime Minister Diefenbaker and Eisenhower for a short cruise on the royal yacht Britannia at Saint-Lambert.

Which port at Superior's western tip is the world's farthest-inland port for ocean ships?

Duluth and neighbouring Superior, Wisconsin form the Twin Ports; the city's 1905 Aerial Lift Bridge was America's first transporter bridge.

Which canal lets ships bypass Niagara Falls between Erie and Ontario, and how many locks does it have?

The canal first opened in 1829 and has been rebuilt three times; the current fourth canal was finished in 1932.

The canal completed across New York in 1825 linked Erie to which river?

Toll revenue paid off the state's construction debt within the first year, and the canal made New York City the dominant Atlantic port.

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

At the opening he sailed from Buffalo to New York and poured a keg of Lake Erie water into the harbour, the 'Wedding of the Waters'.

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

It was at least the thirteenth fire on the river; the Time magazine photo that made it famous was actually of a bigger blaze in 1952.

Which Great Lake did Time call a 'gigantic cesspool' in 1969?

The clean-up that followed included the 1972 Clean Water Act and the bi-national Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

Zebra mussels were first detected in the Great Lakes in 1988. How are they thought to have arrived?

The first sighting was in Lake St. Clair; the mussels filter so much water that they have changed the clarity and food web of the lakes.

The parasitic sea lamprey, which devastated Great Lakes trout, is thought to have entered through two canals: the Erie Canal and which other?

Each lamprey can kill about 40 pounds of fish in its feeding period, which is why the US and Canada run a joint control programme.

An electric barrier across the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is meant to keep which invasive fish out?

The canal is the man-made link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi basin, so it is the front line for anything swimming north.

Lake-effect snow forms when what happens?

The regions downwind that get buried, such as the Tug Hill Plateau east of Lake Ontario, are called snowbelts.

Which is the largest city on Erie?

Its metro area is the third largest in the Great Lakes region after Chicago and Detroit.

Near which Ohio port did Perry's US squadron win the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812?

The 1813 victory gave the Americans control of the lake and produced Perry's famous 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?

Marquette and Jolliet followed the lake to Green Bay in 1673 on their way to finding the Mississippi.

Sleeping Bear Dunes was named 'The Most Beautiful Place in the USA' in 2011 by which TV programme?

The dune system takes its name from an Ojibwe legend of a mother bear waiting on the shore for her cubs, which became the Manitou islands.

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

She was built as just a bow and stern, nicknamed 'Stubby', then sailed to Erie, Pennsylvania and had 700 feet of midsection spliced in.

Kingston, on the north shore of Ontario, dates to a French fort founded in 1673 and once served as what?

The city grew up around Fort Frontenac and was a major wooden shipbuilding centre in the 19th century, alongside Clayton and Oswego across the lake.

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

The US and Canada still keep coast guard vessels on the lakes, but no warships, more than two centuries on.

Roughly how many islands are scattered throughout the Great Lakes?

The largest, Manitoulin, is the biggest island in any inland body of water on Earth, with Isle Royale second.