|
Lake Erie 
Lake Erie is the fourth-largest Great Lake
and the world's twelfth largest freshwater lake. Erie is
about 210 miles long, 57 miles wide and about 570 feet above
sea level.Bordered by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York
and Ontario, Erie has 856 miles of shoreline, giving it a
surface area of just over 9,900 square miles -- slightly
larger than the state of Vermont. Its name comes from the
Erie ("People of the Panther") nation of American Indians
who once inhabited its southern shores.Though the lake
bottoms out at 210 feet, it averages only 62 feet deep.
Because of its saucer-like shallowness, Lake Erie has a
reputation among sailors of being quick to "kick up her
heels," raising waves of frightening size in even a modest
gale.
 Erie may well
be the most used, most enjoyed and perhaps even the
most loved lake of the five. Erie forms part of the top of
the U.S. "industrial crescent" -- the majority of U.S. and
Canadian cars are made in this region, and it is a principal
steel-producing area.It also supports the second-largest
sport fishery on the Great Lakes today (Lake Michigan's is
first), and its walleye fishery is generally considered to
be one of the best in the world.Erie's water quality
problems were legend during the environmental movement of
the late 1960s, when this "dead" Great Lake became a
national symbol of the effects of pollution and neglect.
Fortunately, Lake Erie's flushing time is less than three
years -- the shortest of all the Great Lakes -- and the lake
has been the quickest to respond to U.S. and Canadian
efforts to improve waste treatment and reduce pollution of
the lakes.
At Erie's eastern tip, near
Buffalo, N.Y., its water flows north
into the Niagara River, racing downstream at 750,000 gallons
per second. In a 35-mile stretch between Lake Erie and Lake
Ontario, the river elevation drops 326 feet, nearly 200 feet
of it all at once -- at Niagara Falls, one of North
America's most famous geographic features and one of the
natural wonders of the world.A few miles west of Niagara
Falls lies the Welland Canal, perhaps one of the most
impressive man-made structures in the Great Lakes region.
Operated by Canada, the 26-mile-long canal contains eight
locks that lower and lift cargo ships around the falls.
|
