Lake Superior

Links to Lake Superior's History

 * History of the Great Lakes
 * Oswego County, N.Y. History Site!
 * Routes to the North-Central Lakes Plains
 * History of Minnesota's Lake Superior
 * History of Lake Superior: A Timeline
 * Wikipedia: North Shore (Lake Superior)
 * Minnesota Fun Facts: Early Explorers and Settlers
 * Minnesota Territory - Early History

Volume
The Great Lakes make up 20 percent of the Earth's available (not in the ice caps) surface fresh water and half of that water is stored by Lake Superior. Lake Superior is located on the northern edge of Wisconsin and stretches between the Upper Peninsula of Michigan north to Ontario Canada. It also spans west to the eastern edge of Minnesota. Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes by surface area and volume.

Check out these facts

 * Surface Area: 31,700 square miles
 * Water Volume: 2,934 cubic miles of water
 * Shoreline length: 2,726 miles (including islands)
 * Population living around the lake: 474,150 (Unites States) 155,675 (Canada)
 * Land use near the lake: 68 percent forest
 * Mineral rich area: iron, gold, silver, copper, zinc
 * Gemstone rich: agates, amethyst, greenstone, thomsonite and even some diamonds
 * Not only is Lake Superior the largest of the Great Lakes, it also has the biggest surface area of any freshwater lake in the world. It holds about 3,000 cubic miles of water - enough to fill all the other Great Lakes plus Lake Erie three times over.

Geography
Superior stretches approximately 350 miles from west to east, and 160 miles north to south, with a shoreline almost 2,800 miles long. That is the same distance as driving from Duluth Minnesota to Miami Florida. The land area surrounding the lake also provides Lake Superior with water in the form of rain and snowmelt runoff from Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ontario Canada.

Most of the land around Lake Superior is heavily forested. Not many people farm near the lake because the temperatures are cool and the soil is poor. You won't find many people living along the lake either, except in port cities where the ships load and unload.