Lake Superior
The largest freshwater lake on Earth by surface area
No body of fresh water on the planet spreads wider than Lake Superior. Cold, clear, and prone to storms that have sunk hundreds of ships, it forms the uppermost and grandest of North America's Great Lakes, its surface covering an area larger than the country of Austria. Mariners and locals speak of it with a wariness usually reserved for the open ocean — and with reason, for it can whip up waves that rival those of the Atlantic. Its very name, a French rendering of the Ojibwe gichigami, captures the scale of a lake that feels less like a lake than an inland sea.
Gouged out by glaciers from some of the oldest rock on the continent, Superior holds about 12,100 cubic kilometres of water — roughly a tenth of the world's surface fresh water — and reaches a maximum depth of 406 metres. Its waters are famously frigid and so transparent that objects can be seen dozens of metres down. The lake is large enough to generate its own weather, moderating the climate of its shores and feeding the lake-effect snows that bury the surrounding uplands. Its rocky northern coast, basalt cliffs, and agate-strewn beaches mark the edge of the ancient Canadian Shield.
For centuries the lake was a highway for the Ojibwe and later for the fur trade, its shores yielding copper that Indigenous peoples worked thousands of years ago. Today it carries iron ore and grain through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, among the busiest in the world, and its watershed is protected by national parks and lakeshores on both the American and Canadian sides. The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, lost in a 1975 gale, endures in song as a reminder of how dangerous this freshwater giant can be.