Lake Erie ( ) is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest average water residence time. At its deepest point, Lake Erie is deep, making it the only Great Lake whose deepest point is above sea level.
Located on the International Boundary between Canada and the United States, Lake Erie's northern shore is the Canadian province of Ontario, specifically the Ontario Peninsula, with the U.S. states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York on its western, southern, and eastern shores. These jurisdictions divide the surface area of the lake with water boundaries. The largest city on the lake is Cleveland, anchoring the third largest U.S. metro area in the Great Lakes region, after Greater Chicago and Metro Detroit. Other major cities along the lake shore include Buffalo, New York; Erie, Pennsylvania; and Toledo, Ohio.
Situated below Lake Huron, Erie's primary inlet is the Detroit River. The main natural outflow from the lake is via the Niagara River, which provides hydroelectric power to Canada and the U.S. as it spins huge turbines near Niagara Falls at Lewiston, New York, and Queenston, Ontario. Some outflow occurs via the Welland Canal, part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, which diverts water for ship passages from Port Colborne, Ontario, on Lake Erie, to St. Catharines on Lake Ontario, an elevation difference of . Lake Erie's environmental health has been an ongoing concern for decades, with issues such as overfishing, pollution, algae blooms, aquatic invasive species, and eutrophication generating headlines.
Etymology Lake Erie appeared on maps as as early as 1650. René de Bréhant de Galinée recorded the name of the lake as around 1670. The name Erie is derived from the Iroquoian word , meaning "long tail".
Geography
Geographic features
Lake Erie () has a mean elevation of above sea level. It has a surface area of , of which about is in the United States and is in Canada. Lake Erie has a length of and breadth of at its widest points. It is the shallowest of the Great Lakes with an average depth of 10 fathoms 3 feet or and a maximum depth of Although Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, its basin lies at a relatively high elevation; the lake's deepest point remains above the surface elevation of Lake Ontario, into which the Great Lakes system drains via the Niagara River and Niagara Falls.
Because Erie is the shallowest, it is also the warmest of the Great Lakes, and in 1999 this almost became a problem for two nuclear power plants which require cool lake water to keep their reactors cool. The warm summer of 1999 caused lake temperatures to come close to the limit necessary to keep the plants cool. Also because of its shallowness, it is the first to freeze in the winter.
The shallowest section of Lake Erie is the western basin where depths average only ; as a result, "the slightest breeze can kick up lively waves", also known as seiches. The "waves build very quickly", according to other accounts. The region around the lake is known as the "thunderstorm capital of Canada" with "breathtaking" lightning displays. Sometimes fierce waves springing up unexpectedly have led to dramatic rescues; in one instance, a Cleveland resident was trapped by churning surf with six foot waves near his dock, but was rescued by a fire department diver from Avon Lake, Ohio:
Lake Erie is primarily fed by the Detroit River (from Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair) and drains via the Niagara River and Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario. Navigation downstream is provided by the Welland Canal, part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Other major contributors to Lake Erie include Grand River, Huron River, Maumee River, Sandusky River, Cuyahoga River, and Buffalo River. The drainage basin covers .
Point Pelee National Park, the southernmost point of the Canadian mainland, is located on a peninsula extending into the lake. Lake Erie has 31 islands (13 in Canada, 18 in the U.S.), located generally in the western side of the lake. The largest of these is Pelee Island.
Water levels Lake Erie has a lake retention time of 2.6 years, the shortest of all the Great Lakes. Lake Erie's water level fluctuates with the seasons as in the other Great Lakes. Generally, the lowest levels are in January and February and the highest in June or July, although there have been exceptions. The average yearly level varies depending on long-term precipitation. Short-term level changes are often caused by seiches that are particularly high when southwesterly winds blow across the length of the lake during storms. These cause water to pile up at the eastern end of the lake. Storm-driven seiches can cause damage onshore. During one storm in November 2003, the water level at Buffalo rose by with waves of for a rise of . Meanwhile, at the western end of the lake, Toledo experienced a similar drop in water level.
Historic High Water. In the summer of 1986, Lake Erie reached its highest level at above the datum. The high water records were set from April 1986 through January 1987. Levels ranged from above the datum. Historic Low Water. In the winter of 1934, Lake Erie reached its lowest level at below the datum. Monthly low water records were set from July 1934 through June 1935. During these twelve months water levels ranged from below the datum to even with the datum.
Geology Lake Erie was carved out by glacier ice and went through many phases before its current form which is less than 4,000 years old, which is a short span in geological terms. Before this, the land on which the lake now sits went through several complex stages. A large lowland basin formed over two million years ago as a result of an eastern flowing river that existed well before the Pleistocene ice ages. This ancient drainage system was destroyed by the first major glacier in the area, while it deepened and enlarged the lowland areas, allowing water to settle and form a lake. The glaciers were able to carve away more land on the eastern side of the lowland because the bedrock is made of shale which is softer than the carbonate rocks of dolomite and limestone on the western side. The lake basin is divided into distinct eastern, central basin, and western basin sub-basins, with especially shallow conditions in the western basin, which averages only deep and is rich in nutrients and fish. Geological analyses indicate that differential glacial erosion, and the influence of structural features such as the Niagara Escarpment, limited the extent of overdeepening when compared with Lake Superior and Lake Ontario.
As many as three glaciers advanced and retreated over the land, causing temporary lakes to form in the time periods in between each of them (see: Lake Whittlesey, Lake Maumee and Lake Arkona). Because each lake had a different volume of water, their shorelines rested at differing elevations. The last lake to form, Lake Warren, existed between about 13,000 and 12,000 years ago. It was deeper than the current Lake Erie, and its shoreline existed about inland from the modern one. Early Lake Erie went through many phases with its ancient sand dunes visible in the Oak Openings Region in Northwest Ohio. There, the sandy dry lake bed soil was not sufficient to support large trees with the exception of a few species of oaks, forming a rare oak savanna.
History
Indigenous peoples At the time of European contact, there were several Indigenous peoples living around the shores of the eastern end of the lake. The Erie tribe (from whom the lake takes its name) lived along the southern edge, while the Neutrals (also known as Attawandaron) lived along the northern shore. The tribal name "erie" is a shortened form of the Iroquoian word , meaning "long tail". The name may also come from the word eri, meaning "cherry tree". Near Port Stanley, there is an Indigenous village dating from the 16th century known as the Southwold Earthworks where as many as 800 Neutral Indigenous peoples once lived; the archaeological remains include double earth walls winding around the grass-covered perimeter. Europeans named the tribe the Neutral Indians since these people refused to fight with other tribes.
Both the Erie and Neutrals were colonized and assimilated by their hostile eastern neighbors, the Iroquois Confederacy, between 1651 and 1657 during the Beaver Wars.Trigger, Bruce; The Children of Aataentsic (McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston and Montreal,1987, ), pp. 789–797. For decades after those wars, the land around eastern Lake Erie was claimed and utilized by the Iroquois as a hunting ground. As the power of the Iroquois waned during the last quarter of the 17th century, several other, mainly Anishinaabe, displaced them from the territories they claimed on the north shore of the lake.Schmalz, Peter S.; The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1991, ), pp. 13–34. There was a legend of an Indigenous woman named Huldah, who, despairing over her lost British lover, hurled herself from a high rock from Pelee Island.
European exploration and settlement
In 1669, Frenchman Louis Jolliet was the first documented European to sight Lake Erie, although there is speculation that Étienne Brûlé may have come across it in 1615.Ashworth, William (1987). The Late, Great Lakes: An Environmental History, p. 36. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. . Lake Erie was the last of the Great Lakes to be explored by Europeans, since the Iroquois who occupied the Niagara River area were in conflict with the French, and they did not allow explorers or traders to pass through; explorers followed rivers out of Lake Ontario and portaged to Lake Huron. British authorities in Canada were nervous about possible expansion by American settlers across Lake Erie, so Colonel Thomas Talbot developed the Talbot Trail in 1809 as a way to stimulate settlement to the area; Talbot recruited settlers from Ireland and Scotland, and there are numerous places named after him in southern Ontario, such as Port Talbot, the Talbot River, and Talbotville.
During the War of 1812, a United States Navy squadron under Oliver Hazard Perry captured a smaller Royal Navy squadron near Put-in-Bay, Ohio at the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie. As part of the conflict, American troops made repeated raids throughout the Ontario area around Port Rowan, burning towns and villages. Generally, however, with the exceptions of the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812—which were conflicts between the U.S. and Britain—relations between the U.S. and Canada have been remarkably friendly with an "unfortified boundary" and an agreement "that has kept all fleets of war off the Great Lakes."
In 1837, the Lower Canada Rebellion broke out. These primarily concerned political reforms and land allocation issues. Some of the rebels stationed themselves in the U.S. and crossed the ice from Sandusky Bay to Pelee Island wearing "tattered overcoats and worn-out boots", and carrying muskets, pitchforks, and swords, but the islanders had already fled. Later, there was a battle on the ice with the Royal 32nd Regiment, with the rebels being driven to retreat.
Settlers established commercial fisheries on the north coast of the lake around the 1850s. An important business was fishing. In the pre-Civil War years, railways sprouted everywhere, and around 1852 there were railways circling the lake. Maritime traffic picked up, although the lake was usually closed because of ice from December to early April, and ships had to wait for the ice to clear before proceeding. Since slavery had been abolished in Canada in 1833 but was still legal in southern U.S., a Lake Erie crossing was sometimes required for fugitive slaves seeking freedom: