The Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
100 free The Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
49 free The Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario trivia questions with answers. The Great Lakes hold about a fifth of the planet's surface fresh water, and the stories piled up around them are just as deep: a ship that sank with all hands and became a folk ballad, a river that caught fire and launched the environmental movement, a canal that made New York City, and a lake that spent 18 days as an honorary Great Lake in 1998. This quiz starts easy (which lake is entirely inside the United States, what mnemonic spells the five names) and gets tough fast: how long water lingers in Lake Superior, which lake has the world's largest freshwater island, who first went over Niagara in a barrel, and what the Fitzgerald's captain said in his final radio message. It covers geology, geography, shipping, the Seaway and the Erie Canal, invasive species, lake-effect snow and the cities on the shores. Use it for a Midwest-themed pub quiz round, a geography lesson or a family car ride to the lake. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which is the only one of the five Great Lakes that lies entirely within the United States?
Michigan
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.
Q 02Roughly what share of the world's surface fresh water do the Great Lakes contain?
21%
The Great Lakes hold about 21% of the world's surface fresh water, roughly six quadrillion US gallons, enough to cover the contiguous United States to a depth of about 9.5 feet.
Q 03Which lake is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, though only third by volume?
Superior
Superior ranks only third by volume, behind Baikal in Siberia and Tanganyika in East Africa; the Caspian Sea is bigger but brackish.
Q 04Which two Great Lakes are hydrologically a single body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac?
Michigan and Huron
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.
Q 05Which Great Lake is the shallowest, the smallest by volume and the warmest?
Erie
Its western basin is so shallow that, as one account puts it, the slightest breeze can kick up lively waves.
Q 06Which Great Lake has the smallest surface area?
Ontario
Ontario covers about 7,340 square miles, the least of the five, yet its 802-foot maximum depth means it holds far more water than shallow Erie.
Q 07The Great Lakes began to form at the end of the last glacial period, as which ice sheet receded?
Laurentide
The Laurentide Ice Sheet carved the basins and its meltwater filled them, creating vanished ancestors such as Lake Algonquin and Glacial Lake Iroquois.
Q 08The name Superior comes from French explorers who called it 'lac supérieur'. What did they mean by it?
The upper lake
It was simply above Lake Huron in elevation on their route in; the Ojibwe name, Gichigami, means 'great water'.
Q 09Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha uses which name for Superior, borrowed from Ojibwe?
Gitche Gumee
Gitche Gumee is Longfellow's spelling of the Ojibwe name Gichigami; his 1855 poem pictures Hiawatha's childhood 'by the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water'.
Q 10Because of its huge volume, water entering Lake Superior stays there on average for roughly how long?
191 years
Superior's retention time is about 191 years: it holds roughly 2,900 cubic miles of water, while its single outlet carries away only a comparative trickle.
Q 11Lake Erie takes its name from the Iroquoian word erielhonan, which translates as what?
Long tail
'Long tail' is erielhonan; the Erie people who gave the lake its name were destroyed or absorbed by the Iroquois in the 17th century.
Q 12The name Michigan is believed to come from the Ojibwe word mishigami, which means what?
Great water
'Great water' is mishigami; the Straits of Mackinac take their name from Michilimackinac, understood to mean Place of the Great Turtle.
Q 13The Hurons, after whom Lake Huron is named, are also known by what name?
Wyandot
Wyandot (also Wendat) is the Hurons' own name; 'Huron' was a French nickname, and the French also called the lake La Mer Douce, the freshwater sea.
Q 21What cargo was the Edmund Fitzgerald carrying on her final voyage?
Iron ore pellets
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.
Q 22What were the last words radioed by Captain Ernest McSorley before his freighter, the Edmund Fitzgerald, vanished?
We are holding our own
'We are holding our own' answered the freighter Arthur M. Anderson, which was trailing behind and lost the Fitzgerald from radar minutes later.
Q 23Which Canadian singer-songwriter turned the sinking of the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald into a hit 1976 ballad?
Gordon Lightfoot
Q 14The largest island in any inland body of water in the world sits in Lake Huron. What is it called?
Manitoulin
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.
Q 15The largest island in Superior, and the second largest in the whole Great Lakes, is which national park?
Isle Royale
Isle Royale, about 45 miles long, became a national park in 1940; it has no permanent residents and hosts the decades-long study of its wolves and moose.
Q 16Georgian Bay, sometimes called the 'sixth Great Lake', is an arm of which of the five?
Huron
Its 30,000 Islands inspired the Group of Seven painters, and Samuel de Champlain overwintered on its shores in 1615.
Q 17Which US state borders both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario?
New York
New York is the only state on both lakes: its Erie shore runs from the Pennsylvania line to Buffalo and its Ontario shore from the Niagara River to the St. Lawrence.
Q 18Le Griffon, the first known sailing ship on the upper Great Lakes, was built in 1679 for which explorer?
La Salle
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.
Q 19Which body of water briefly became America's official 'sixth Great Lake' in March 1998?
Champlain
Lake Champlain got the status through a clause in a Sea Grant reauthorisation bill that President Clinton signed on 6 March 1998; Midwestern outrage had it repealed within weeks.
Q 20The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Superior on November 10 of which year?
1975
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.
Gordon Lightfoot wrote it after reading a Newsweek article titled 'The Cruelest Month'; the ship's bell, raised in 1995, sits in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.
Q 24The stretch of Superior's shore between Grand Marais, Michigan and Whitefish Point is nicknamed what?
Graveyard of the Great Lakes
The 'Graveyard of the Great Lakes' has claimed more ships than any other part of Superior; its wrecks are protected within the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve.
Q 25Roughly how many died in the November 1913 'White Hurricane', the deadliest storm in Great Lakes history?
More than 250
More than 250 sailors died; the storm wrecked 19 ships and stranded 19 more, and Lake Huron alone swallowed eight freighters with all hands on 9 November.
Q 26Niagara Falls is really three waterfalls; which one, straddling the US–Canada border, is the largest?
Horseshoe
Horseshoe Falls takes about 90% of the river's summer flow and is the most powerful waterfall in North America.
Q 27The Niagara River, which creates the falls, drains which of the Great Lakes into which?
Erie to Ontario
The Niagara River carries Erie's outflow 36 miles north into Ontario, dropping about 326 feet on the way, which is why Ontario lies far below the other four lakes.
Q 28Who became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, in October 1901?
A 63-year-old schoolteacher
Annie Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old schoolteacher, went over on 24 October 1901 after sending her cat first to test the barrel; she survived and said 'No one ought ever do that again.'
Q 29The only recorded time Niagara Falls stopped flowing was caused by what, in March 1848?
An ice jam
An ice jam at the head of the Niagara River, driven by wind on Lake Erie, held back the water for about 30 hours; in 1969 engineers deliberately dewatered the American Falls for months.
Q 30The Soo Locks let ships pass between Superior and the lower lakes. On which waterway are they built?
St. Marys
The first locks opened in 1855; the Army Corps of Engineers runs them today and charges no toll.