56 Fun Facts About Lake Superior

Lake Superior drains east into which of the other Great Lakes?

Huron. Nature no longer decides how much water makes the trip: gates across the lake's outlet let a joint US-Canadian board set Superior's outflow.

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake by area, but which salty body of water is usually ranked the world's largest lake?

The Caspian Sea. Whether it counts as a lake or a sea was argued over for decades by the five countries on its shores, because the answer decided how its oil and gas would be shared.

Which two lakes hold more fresh water than Lake Superior?

Baikal and Tanganyika each cover well under half of Superior's area, but both fill rift valleys more than a kilometre deep, while Superior averages under 500 feet.

The Ojibwe name for Lake Superior, gichi-gami, which Longfellow wrote as 'Gitche Gumee', means what?

Great sea. Longfellow glossed the name as 'Big-Sea-Water', and gichigami is still the everyday Ojibwe word for a sea or any large lake.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow set which poem 'by the shores of Gitche Gumee'?

The Song of Hiawatha took its legends from Henry Schoolcraft's Ojibwe collections and its drumbeat metre from the Kalevala, a borrowing that brought accusations of plagiarism.

Missionaries of which Catholic order explored Lake Superior in the 1660s and charted its shores?

Jesuits Claude Allouez and Claude Dablon travelled round the lake and mapped it. Its French name, lac supérieur, meant simply the upper lake, the highest in the chain, and had nothing to do with size.

Lake Superior's surface area is roughly the same as that of which European country?

Austria covers about 83,900 square km against the lake's 82,100. That much water is slow to warm and cool, which keeps the lake's shores cooler in summer and milder in winter than places inland.

Roughly how deep is Lake Superior at its deepest point?

1,300 ft is about right: the deepest sounding is some 1,330 feet. The lake's surface sits 600 feet above sea level, so its floor there lies more than 700 feet below it.

Roughly how long does a drop of water stay in Lake Superior before it flows out?

About 200 years is the average (191 by the usual count), because the lake holds more water than the other four Great Lakes combined and has only one outlet. Shallow Lake Erie, by contrast, flushes through in under three years.

Lake Superior's deepest water stays near 4 °C all year because fresh water at that temperature is what?

At its densest, water sinks, so the 4 °C layer settles on the bottom and stays there. Twice a year the whole lake reaches that temperature and mixes from top to bottom.

There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America to what depth?

That is roughly 2,900 cubic miles of water, about a tenth of the world's surface fresh water. Storm waves on it have topped 30 feet.

What is the largest island in Lake Superior?

Isle Royale has no roads at all, so visitors leave their cars on the mainland, arrive by ferry or seaplane, and get around on foot or by canoe.

The national park on Lake Superior's largest island is famous for a long study of which predator and prey?

Wolves and moose make an unusually simple system on the island: the wolves are the only predator of the moose, and the moose are almost their only food. Scientists have tracked both since 1958.

The national park on Lake Superior's largest island does what each winter?

Closes completely: from 1 November to 15 April the whole park shuts because of extreme winter weather, for visitors' own safety.

Duluth's French namesake reached Lake Superior's western end in 1679 to make peace between the Ojibwe and which nation?

Dakota and Ojibwe leaders made peace at meetings he arranged on the lake in 1679. The next year he won the release of the missionary Louis Hennepin, held captive by another Dakota band.

Duluth's Aerial Bridge, built in 1905, was the first of what kind of bridge in the United States?

Transporter bridges carry traffic in a gondola slung beneath a high span, and Duluth's held 350 people plus wagons. Growing car traffic stretched it past its limit, so in 1929-30 it was rebuilt as the lift bridge that stands today.

Which musician was born in Duluth in 1941?

Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, lived in Duluth until he was six. His father then caught polio and the family moved north to his mother's home town of Hibbing, where he grew up.

Which waterway, opened in 1959, lets oceangoing ships sail 2,300 miles inland to reach Duluth?

St. Lawrence Seaway locks opened the Great Lakes to ocean ships in 1959. Nicknamed 'salties', they take about a week and 16 locks to climb from the Atlantic to Duluth, often to load grain.

Thunder Bay, Ontario, was created on 1 January 1970 by merging Fort William with which other city?

Port Arthur and Fort William were long-time rivals that merged only under pressure from the Ontario government. Voters picked the new name, and 'Thunder Bay' won because 'Lakehead' and 'The Lakehead' split the rest.

One Ojibwe legend identifies the Sleeping Giant near Thunder Bay as which trickster hero, turned to stone?

Nanabozho, known around Thunder Bay as Nanabijou, is said to have been turned to stone when the secret of a rich silver deposit at Silver Islet was given away to white men.

A statue overlooking Lake Superior near Thunder Bay honours which Canadian, forced to end his 1980 cross-country run nearby?

Terry Fox had run close to a marathon a day for 143 days on an artificial leg when cancer reached his lungs. He had hoped to raise a dollar for every Canadian, and the total passed that mark months before he died.

Which pink-iced pastry is the signature treat of Thunder Bay?

The Persian's recipe is a closely kept secret at the bakery said to have created it. Locals often slice one in half, toast it in a frying pan and spread on more of the pink berry icing.

Which US body runs the Soo Locks toll-free?

Army Corps of Engineers crews have run the locks since 1881, when Michigan, which had operated the first of them from 1855, handed them to the federal government. Passage has been free ever since.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on November 10, 1975, about 15 nautical miles from which cape?

Whitefish Point marks the sheltered bay the damaged ship was running for. Her captain had radioed a freighter behind him, 'Will you stay by me till I get to Whitefish?', and she sank about 17 miles short.

How many crew members died when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down?

29 men were aboard and none survived. The ship went down so suddenly that no distress call was sent: minutes earlier her captain had told a freighter following behind, 'We are holding our own.'

What cargo was the Edmund Fitzgerald carrying on its final voyage from Superior, Wisconsin?

Taconite pellets are marble-sized balls of processed iron ore, and she carried about 26,000 tons of them. The Coast Guard judged that water flooding into that loaded hold most likely sank her, though the cause is still argued over.

Which singer-songwriter recorded 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald'?

Gordon Lightfoot wrote it after reading a Newsweek report on the sinking. His ballad helped make the Fitzgerald, one freighter among hundreds lost on the lakes, one of the best-known wrecks of them all.

In 1995 divers in an atmospheric suit recovered what from the Edmund Fitzgerald, leaving a replica in its place?

The ship's bell was raised to serve as a memorial to the crew and is now on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. The replica left on the wreck is engraved with the name of every man who died.

Which Wisconsin insurance company owned the Edmund Fitzgerald and named the ship after its own chairman?

Northwestern Mutual built the ship as an investment, not to sail her itself: it chartered her to a Cleveland shipping firm. At 729 feet she was the biggest vessel on the lakes when launched in 1958.

Why is it said that Lake Superior 'never gives up her dead'?

Cold water keeps bodies from floating: the deep lake stays near 4 °C all year, which slows the decay that would normally fill a body with gas and lift it back to the surface within days.

The deadly Great Lakes Storm of November 1913 is remembered by which nickname?

White Hurricane fits: two storm systems merged over the lakes into a blizzard with hurricane-force winds. It raged for days and killed more than 250 people, most of them sailors.

Which Lake Superior lighthouse was built after a 1905 storm damaged 29 ships?

Split Rock had no road when work began in 1909, so a hoist on the cliff lifted the building materials from supply boats on the lake below. The light was first lit the next summer.

Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula was the site of the first major US mining boom for which metal?

Copper lies here as almost pure metal instead of ore, and Native miners were digging it out some 7,000 years before the 1840s rush brought the prospectors.

Which hand-held meat pie, brought to the Keweenaw by immigrant miners, became the signature food of Michigan's far north?

Pasty-making arrived with miners from Cornwall, and other immigrant groups copied their lunch along with their mining skills. Small, filling and easy to carry underground, the pasty outlasted the mines.

Lake-effect snow buries Michigan's Upper Peninsula when winter winds cross Lake Superior water that is what?

Warmer than the air: the cold wind picks up heat and moisture from the open lake and drops it as snow on the shore downwind. That is why Michigan's Upper Peninsula gets far more snow than Duluth.

Pictured Rocks, near Munising, Michigan, became the first what in the United States in 1966?

National lakeshore was a new kind of park when Congress created this one. Its name comes from the streaks of colour left where mineral-rich groundwater seeps out of the cliffs and trickles down the rock face.

The Apostle Islands' sea caves were carved by waves from which red rock?

Sandstone laid down by ancient rivers is soft enough for the lake's waves to hollow out. The ice formations inside draw winter visitors, but only in the rare years when the lake freezes hard enough to walk out to them.

Why did the Apostle Islands' first lighthouse go dark after only a year?

Built in the wrong place: the plans called for Long Island, so the builders were made to put up a second light there. The first, on Michigan Island, stood dark until it was relit in 1869.

Which island, spiritual centre of the Lake Superior Chippewa, is the only Apostle Island open to private ownership?

Madeline is the largest of the group but was left out of the federal park that protects the rest, so its old fur-trade village carries on. When ice stops the winter ferry, a windsled and then an ice road take over.

Minnesota's official state gemstone is the Lake Superior variety of which banded stone?

Agate formed here in the gas pockets of billion-year-old lava flows, where iron stained its bands red and orange. Ice-age glaciers later tore the stones loose and scattered them far to the south.

The Grand Portage footpath let fur traders bypass falls on which river, now part of the US–Canada border?

Pigeon River's last 20 miles are a run of waterfalls and gorges no canoe could pass, so canoes and cargo went overland on an 8.5-mile trail whose Ojibwe name means the Great Carrying Place.

Which Ontario river is the largest tributary flowing into Lake Superior?

Nipigon River is only about 30 miles long, but it carries the whole outflow of Lake Nipigon, which puts it ahead of the 200 or so other rivers feeding the lake. Three hydro dams now harness its steep drop.

Ontario's Slate Islands, off Lake Superior's north shore, were formed by what?

A meteorite impact blasted out a crater, and the islands are the peak that rebounded at its centre. The shock left cone-shaped fractures in the rock some ten metres long, among the largest known.

The hired canoe men who paddled trade goods and furs across Lake Superior for Montreal's fur companies were called what?

Voyageurs signed on in Montreal for the season, paddled trade goods west in spring, swapped them for furs at depots on the lake and raced home before the rivers froze. Their songs, 'Alouette' among them, outlived the trade.

Lake Superior State University's 'Unicorn Hunters' are best known for publishing an annual list of what?

Banished words have been listed every New Year since 1976, when the school's publicity director launched the list as a stunt to get a small college noticed. It still draws wide news coverage each year.

Which river is Lake Superior's only natural outlet, carrying its water on toward the other Great Lakes?

St. Marys River is the lake's only way out by water, so every freighter going in or out has to pass through the Soo Locks built beside it.

Lawren Harris painted the north shore of Lake Superior in the 1920s as a founder of which Canadian art movement?

Group of Seven leader Harris found his subject on the lake's north shore: in canvases such as Above Lake Superior he pared hills, shoreline and cloud down to the austere, monumental shapes he is known for.

The John Beargrease marathon, run each January along Lake Superior's North Shore, is a race for what?

Sled dog teams run it in honour of John Beargrease, an Ojibwe mail carrier who for two decades brought the post up the roadless shore by dog sled and boat.

Which fur-trading rival of the Hudson's Bay Company built its depots at Grand Portage and Fort William?

North West Company partners from Montreal met their wintering traders at these lakeside depots every summer. Decades of costly rivalry ended in 1821, when the firm was merged into the Hudson's Bay Company.

Which invader spread through shipping canals and devastated Lake Superior's lake trout?

Sea lamprey fasten onto big fish and feed on their blood. They spread west once a ship canal let them bypass the falls that had kept them out, and only a joint US-Canadian control programme saved the trout.

What are residents of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, on Lake Superior's south shore, commonly called?

Yoopers comes from saying 'U.P.-ers' aloud, a coinage first recorded in the 1970s. They return the favour by calling people from the Lower Peninsula 'trolls', because they live below the Mackinac Bridge.

Hancock, on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, is known as a cultural capital for Americans of which ancestry?

Finnish immigrants came in large numbers to work the mines, and the sauna came with them and stayed, adopted right across Michigan's far north.

Lake Superior fills part of a billion-year-old tear in North America's crust known as which rift?

Midcontinent Rift lava poured out for some 20 million years as North America began to tear in two, then stopped before an ocean could open. The pile of lava, miles thick, sagged to form the basin the lake now fills.

Which variety of quartz, Ontario's official gemstone, is mined near Thunder Bay on Lake Superior's north shore?

Amethyst is so plentiful along this shore that Ontario adopted it as its official gemstone in 1975. At the mines outside Thunder Bay, visitors can dig out their own.

The French warships Inkerman and Cerisoles, which vanished on Lake Superior in 1918 with 78 men, were what type of vessel?

Minesweepers built for France at what is now Thunder Bay, they sank on their first trip, days after the war they were ordered for had ended. No trace of either ship had been found a century later.

Which grain, sacred to the Ojibwe of the Lake Superior region, is known in their language as manoomin?

Wild rice was the 'food that grows on water' in the prophecy that drew the Ojibwe west to the lake's marshes. It is still gathered from canoes, the ripe heads tapped with wooden sticks so the grain falls into the boat.