What's The Greatest Great Lake?

What is the greatest Great Lake, and how do you calculate it? These lakes are American gems, being something North America will always have over other continents. To appreciate our beautiful lakes, I found it important to put my best foot forward to try and decide what's the greatest of our five lakes. Before we get into it though, please consider subscribing to the channel, we make geography content about America every single week, so if you enjoy this video, then subscribing would help me out so much. Thank you! So criteria wise, I am judging these beautiful lakes through a combination of natural beauty, cities, and how geographically interesting they are. This is my personal opinion, so please don't kill me, and keep in mind I'm a Wisconsin boy, which means all of these lakes have a special place in my heart. The fifth great lake, the least of the five in my opinion, is Lake Ontario. Located the farthest east of the lakes, it borders the state of New York, and the province of Ontario. This is the smallest of the five lakes by surface area, and fourth by total volume. When it comes to cities, Toronto is located upon this lake, being the second largest metro area on a great lake. Pretty much the entire western quarter of this coastline is very urbanized, with Canada's most extensive region of population existing because it's here. Then there's Rochester on the New York side, a Rust Belt city in upstate New York. With natural beauty, we have places like Chimney Bluffs State Park in Wayne County, New York, a nice dune-y area, but overall this might be the second worst or worst lake in regards to natural beauty. The other main thing of note here is obviously the name of the lake currently, that being Lake America. The idea that I would ever give my two cents on this situation is preposterous, but what I will say, completely unrelated from that, is that I've decided that Lake Ontario feels the least American because the main population center is in Canada, and it holds more of the influence, so if I personally wanted to troll Canada by naming a lake Lake America, this would be my choice too, I guess. Next up is my most controversial choice, I think Lake Huron is next. You may disagree, but what's important is that I absolutely love the next four lakes. Lake Huron is the second largest lake in the U.S. in the Great Lakes, and especially in the north, it excels in natural beauty. Check out this coast here. This is part of the reason why Lake Huron has the longest coast of any great lake. There are a ton of islands, including Manitoulin Island, this being the largest freshwater island in the world. Beautiful area with actually a bit of population on it. Interestingly, it has an island within an island within a lake, so that's pretty cool. On the American side of Lake Huron, it holds half of the Mackinac Strait, and it's home to Mackinac Island, a very popular and fascinating tourist destination, which does not allow people to drive cars. My plan to move all urbanists to this island and see what happens is currently in full swing. For natural beauty, Lake Huron excels, with Bruce Peninsula State Park and Killarney Provincial Park. And check out this calcite mine in Rogers City, Michigan. Pretty cool, right? Third place, again controversially, is Lake Erie. Just hear me out here, guys. Lake Erie is the most underrated great lake in my opinion, and it definitely has the most unique oddities of any lake. The main thing to note here is that it's the fourth largest by surface area, but by volume, it's by far the smallest. Why is this? Well, it's extremely shallow. If you look at the Great Lakes Systems map, you check how shallow Lake Erie is compared to the other lakes, and it's absolutely incredible. When glaciers were sweeping through this area and created the Great Lakes, they simply didn't carve as deep here. But it still formed a lake, and so we now see depths averaging just 62 feet. Much less than that of the very similar Lake Ontario, which is 283 feet. Lake Erie's maximum depth is right here, and it's just 210 feet. And if we look at the region, we find something especially cool. Lake Erie is almost built like three different lakes. The deepest is in the far east, where it's a normal great lake depth, kinda. And the middle is still very shallow, but it's not insane. But you get to the far west, and that's where it is incredibly shallow. Like 24 feet on average shallow. This creates every other oddity we see. It warms rapidly in the summer, making it a great lake for beaches and stuff. It also freezes over in the winter often, being the only lake that does that. It's great for ice fishing, and it's also great for summer fishing, being the walleye capital of the world, depending on who you ask. To fish for walleye, a lot of the time people go to the Lake Erie Islands. This being Kelly's Island, South Bass Island, Middle Bass Island, North Bass Island, and Peely Island. I also really like Chicken Island, Chick Island, Hen Island, and Little Chicken Island. That's good stuff right there. Put-In-Bay is a massive tourist destination, and it helps that it's so near to Sandusky, home of Cedar Point. Now the reason this isn't the best lake in the world is because it doesn't have the same natural beauty, and the cities aren't the best. The four main ones are Toledo, Cleveland, Erie, and Buffalo, all major declining rust belt cities that were focused on the manufacturing industry, and now see plenty of urban blight. That's okay though, because Buffalo gets a ton of snow due to lake effect winds, which is really cool. Number two probably has to be Lake Michigan, the most American lake. Yes, that's right folks, this is the only lake to be fully contained within the borders of the United States, and it is interesting and awesome for several reasons. First, it's the third largest Great Lake, but second and most importantly, it's got that city catalogued to its name. We have Chicago, obviously the largest Great Lake city. It's a fascinating historic city that obviously needs no introduction, it's a cultural hub, and it's undeniably cool that our Great Lakes have the third largest city in the US. Up north we have Milwaukee, a rust belt city comparable to somewhere like Cleveland. But hey, the Brewers have won over a hundred games this season, so that's gotta matter for something. We've got Green Bay, home to the Packers, one of the most interesting Midwest metros of like 300,000 people, and then also Traverse City in Michigan. Tourism and natural beauty go hand in hand here on Lake Michigan, with Door County and Leelanau County. Two peninsulas pushing into the lake, final place to appreciate on Lake Michigan is Beaver Island. This is on my bucket list of places to visit for obvious reasons, but it seems to just be a fascinating area with like nothing going on there. Finally, it is hard to argue that the greatest Great Lake is Lake Superior, and if you've seen the coastline in the winter when there's like four feet of snow on the ground, you're likely to agree with this. Just look at it. Lake Superior is the largest lake in the system, it's the deepest lake in the system, it's the coldest lake in the system, and it's the largest freshwater lake by surface area in the world. In this situation, it gets helped a ton because of natural beauty and the lack of cities seen here. We have Duluth, Minnesota, a beautiful city might I add, and then Thunder Bay and Canada, both fairly small metropolitan areas. Apart from that, there is so much wilderness to look at. The Crown Jewel is probably Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, a beautiful area, but then you also have Apostle Islands in Wisconsin, Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, Pekasquaw National Park in Lake Superior Provincial Park in Ontario, and simply way more completely undeveloped wilderness coastline than any other Great Lake. Also, this is a historically treacherous lake for boat transportation, and this coastline here is called the Shipwreck Coast, mostly coming from the bottleneck here at Whitefish Point and quickly changing weather that goes on on Lake Superior. It's an incredible place that I encourage everyone to visit at least once. I think the big thing this video highlights though is that all of these lakes are incredible in their own way, they're very interesting, and there isn't a Great Lake that can't serve as a destination for a weekend trip or more. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much to the members this week, I always appreciate you guys so much and how much you've contributed to the channel these last few years. If you want to become a member, the link is down in the description below. All the money goes straight into my savings, as I save up for a wedding. So if you want to help me out in my life, this is the best way to do it, I really appreciate it, and there's obviously no obligation. Thank you so much.