40 Fun Facts About Lake Huron

Which island in Lake Huron, home to over 100 lakes of its own, is the world's largest lake island?

Manitoulin Island is so big that its own Lake Manitou is the largest lake on any freshwater island, and one of its other lakes holds an island of its own.

Mackinac Island in Lake Huron became America's second national park in 1875; which park was the first?

Yellowstone came first, and soldiers looked after both parks. Mackinac's lasted only twenty years before it was handed to Michigan as the state's first state park.

Mackinac Island banned what in 1898 after carriage drivers said the newcomers startled their horses?

Motor vehicles are still barred, apart from emergency and service ones, so people get around on foot, by bicycle or by horse-drawn carriage.

The world's largest underground mine of which mineral extends beneath Lake Huron from Goderich, Ontario?

Salt was struck there in 1866 by a prospector who was drilling for oil. The mine now lies 530 metres deep and reaches about 7 square kilometres out under the lake.

Which singer was born in Bay City, the Michigan port just upriver from Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay?

Madonna was born there in 1958 but raised in the Detroit suburbs, and she left Michigan for New York in 1978 to chase a career in dance.

Which inventor grew up in Port Huron, at the foot of Lake Huron, selling newspapers on the trains?

Thomas Edison moved to Port Huron as a small boy, and by twelve he was selling newspapers and sweets on the daily run to Detroit. The depot he left from is now a museum.

Saginaw Bay, an arm of Lake Huron, cuts which nicknamed region off from the rest of Lower Michigan?

The Thumb earns its name because the Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. Its rich farmland is known for sugar beets and navy beans.

A pipeline from Lake Huron was planned in 2010 to supply which Michigan city, later hit by a lead crisis?

Flint began drawing from its own river in April 2014 as a stopgap while the pipeline was being built, and that switch set off the crisis.

Stone blinds on a drowned ridge under Lake Huron let hunters ambush which animals 9,000 years ago?

Caribou herds once migrated along the ridge, which was a dry land bridge when the lake stood about 100 metres lower. Archaeologists have found at least 60 stone structures there since 2008.

Which Ontario resort town on Lake Huron's Georgian Bay lines the world's longest freshwater strip of sand?

Wasaga Beach sits about 150 kilometres north of Toronto, which makes its long sandy shore a popular summer escape from the city.

Which mnemonic word, built from the Great Lakes' initials, starts with the H of Lake Huron?

HOMES packs the first letters of all five lakes into one word, although it lists them in no geographic order.

By surface area, which is the only one of the five Great Lakes that is larger than Lake Huron?

Lake Superior covers more area, but Lake Huron wins on shoreline: counting the coasts of its many islands, it has the longest shore of any Great Lake.

Only two freshwater lakes on Earth cover more area than Lake Huron; which African lake is one of them?

Lake Victoria has the bigger surface, yet Lake Huron holds more water: about 3,500 cubic kilometres against roughly 2,400.

What name is given to the world's largest freshwater archipelago, strung along the east side of Georgian Bay?

Thirty Thousand Islands is the name for the maze that runs about 200 kilometres up the coast. UNESCO made the area a biosphere reserve in 2004.

Flowerpot Island, in Lake Huron's Fathom Five marine park, takes its name from which natural features?

Rock pillars shaped like flower pots stand on the eastern shore. There used to be three of them, but one tumbled in 1903.

Which village on Lake Huron's Bruce Peninsula is billed as the world's freshwater scuba-diving capital?

Tobermory owes the title to the many shipwrecks in the clear water offshore. It is also the northern end of the Bruce Trail, one of Canada's longest footpaths.

The rugged shores of Lake Huron's Georgian Bay inspired landscapes by which circle of Canadian painters?

Group of Seven painters often travelled to an island in the bay owned by their patron, James MacCallum, and canvases such as A September Gale came out of those trips.

Which Boston Bruins great was born in Parry Sound, a harbour town on Lake Huron's Georgian Bay?

Bobby Orr is the namesake of the town's community centre and of the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame there, where his Order of Canada medal is on display.

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Lake Huron boasts the world's longest example of which feature?

Porch length is the hotel's boast: the front veranda runs about 660 feet, and the hotel has drawn criticism for charging non-guests a fee to enjoy the view from it.

On which holiday can people walk across the Mackinac Bridge, where Lakes Huron and Michigan meet?

Labor Day is the one day the five-mile bridge opens to walkers, and by tradition Michigan's governor leads the crowd across.

Day-trippers to Mackinac Island in Lake Huron are nicknamed after which sweet sold in its many shops?

Fudge was not invented on the island, but its early candy makers won visitors over by using fans to blow the smell out into the street.

The deadliest storm in Great Lakes history battered Lake Huron's shipping in 1913 during which month?

November gales brew when storm fronts feed on the still-warm lakes. The 1913 one killed more than 250 people and earned the nickname the White Hurricane.

After the 1913 storm, the freighter Charles S. Price was found floating on Lake Huron in which state?

Upside down with only its bow showing, the hull drifted for days as a mystery ship, because nobody could name it until a diver went under to look.

Which French explorer built Le Griffon, the ship that crossed Lake Huron in 1679 and then vanished?

Robert de La Salle sent the ship back with a load of furs while he pressed on, and it vanished with its crew. Many wrecks around the lakes have since been claimed as Le Griffon, and none has been confirmed.

Which founder of Quebec City reached Lake Huron in 1615 and spent the winter with the Huron people?

Samuel de Champlain did not want to stay, but his Huron allies insisted. He used the months to explore and map the country around Georgian Bay.

Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, founded near Georgian Bay in 1639, was a mission run by which Catholic order?

Jesuits built it as the first European settlement in what is now Ontario, then burned it themselves ten years later rather than see it overrun.

British troops took Fort Mackinac on Lake Huron without a fight in the opening weeks of which war?

War of 1812 news had not reached the American garrison, so the British hauled a cannon to the ridge above, fired one round and demanded surrender.

John Jacob Astor made Mackinac Island in Lake Huron the hub of a company that grew rich exporting what?

Beaver pelts flowed through the island for about 30 years, until commercial fishing replaced the trade as its main industry.

Which invasive species, together with overfishing, all but wiped out Lake Huron's native lake trout by 1950?

Sea lamprey slipped into the upper lakes through shipping canals, and each one can kill about 40 pounds of fish during its feeding stage.

The Bruce station on Lake Huron's shore was for years the world's largest plant making which kind of power?

Nuclear reactors there take cooling water from the lake, and the warm outflow keeps the shore ice-free in winter, drawing fish and the bald eagles that hunt them.

Which Ontario city, home to a refinery district called Chemical Valley, is the largest city on Lake Huron?

Sarnia grew on petroleum after North America's first commercial oil drilling began nearby at Oil Springs in 1858.

Lake Huron is named for the people the French called Huron; by which name do they know themselves?

Wendat is their own name, and their homeland of Wendake lay between Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe. The French kept calling them Huron regardless.

Scientists study bacteria resembling Earth's earliest life in which features of Lake Huron's floor off Alpena?

Sinkholes there hold water that is rich in sulfur and low in oxygen, so their colourful bacterial mats stand in for the microbes of billions of years ago.

The cliffs of Lake Huron's Bruce Peninsula belong to which long ridge, a UNESCO biosphere reserve?

The Niagara Escarpment forms the spine of the peninsula, then carries on through the world's largest lake island and into northern Michigan.

The Bayview race up Lake Huron from Port Huron to Mackinac Island, held since 1925, is in which sport?

Sailing crews in more than two hundred boats make the run each year, one of the longest freshwater races in the world. The first was won by a sloop named Bernida.

Which vegetable gives its name to a top-heavy rock stack in Lake Huron that can be reached only by water?

Turnip Rock was undercut by waves until its top grew wider than its base, and a concrete collar now guards the waterline against further wear.

Which river carries Lake Huron's outflow south past Port Huron on its way toward Lake Erie?

St. Clair water drops only about five feet over the river's 40 miles, and some geographers regard the channel as a strait.

Which river, bypassed by the Soo Locks, is the main inlet feeding water into Lake Huron?

St. Marys water falls about 23 feet along the way, much of it through rapids, which is why big freighters need the locks to get past.

Which 1980 romantic fantasy starring Christopher Reeve was filmed at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island?

Somewhere in Time got a cool reception from critics but built a cult following, and each October the hotel hosts a fan weekend with an Edwardian costume ball.

Which venomous snake, rare in Canada, still finds a refuge on Lake Huron's Bruce Peninsula?

Massasauga rattlesnakes share the peninsula's national park with black bears and more than 30 kinds of orchid, and it is one of the few places in Canada where they survive.