Tuesday marked the release of Great Lakes In 50 Maps. Written and charted by Detroit-based cartographer and data director Alex B. Hill, the Belt Publishing book is a treasure trove of information about the Great Lakes region—the planet’s single largest freshwater system and home to 10% of the country’s population—and its residents.
Over a span of 128 pages and (as the title suggests) more than 50 different maps, Hill chronicles the indigenous people who first called the area home and named its lakes. He and his visual aids also provide immensely interesting information about things like the region’s role in the Underground Railroad, its insect and bird migration, shipwreck locations, weather tendencies, purported cryptid and lake monster sightings, lighthouses, cargo shipping routes, lake drownings, invasive species, lake depths, and so much more.
There’s even a map tracing the volume of businesses throughout the Rust Belt that use “Great Lakes” in their name. In short, it’s awesome. Even though we’ve long known the city’s proximity to a Great Lake is basically the reason Milwaukee exists as we know it today, Great Lakes in 50 Maps leaves readers with a newfound respect for these exceptional and altogether invaluable bodies of water, and it offers a wealth of deeply—we’re talking Lake Superior-level depths here!—intriguing pieces of information.
Perhaps the most compelling lake-focused factoid we encountered while devouring the book is a short-but-absolutely wild tidbit regarding an 18-day period late in the 20th century in which there was actually a sixth Great Lake. This odd anecdote is featured on page 58 of Great Lakes In 50 Maps, and the passage inspired us to look into this short and controversial stint of Great Lakes expansion a little bit more.
Situated between the borders of New York, Vermont, and the southern edge of Quebec is Lake Champlain. With a size of more than 400 square miles, a maximum depth of 400 feet, its presence in a watershed that touches two nations, and the fact it provides hundreds of thousands of people with drinking water, Lake Champlain can safely be considered a good lake—a very good lake, even. And for a span of less than three weeks over a quarter century ago, it was (technically) a great one.
On March 6, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed a bill authored by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy that increased research and education opportunities in Lake Champlain. The bill reportedly designated the lake as a “Great Lake,” which would allow Vermont to access federal funding reserved for states bordering a Great Lake for their research efforts. Apparently, that phrasing didn’t sit well with Midwestern officials, who were said to be concerned with such a comparatively small body of water sharing Greatness distinction with lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.
As Hill mentions in his book, in terms of surface area, “nearly 17 Lake Champlains would fit into Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes.” It would also take nearly 19 Lake Champlains to match the water volume of the least voluminous Great Lake (Lake Erie). It is, however, deeper both at its maximum depth and its average depth than Lake Erie…but nowhere close to the depth of any other Great Lake. Moreover, it’s the ninth-largest freshwater lake in the U.S., and if Lake Of The Woods (which is approximately four times larger) isn’t a Great Lake, then Lake Champlain certainly isn’t either. Plus, if you ask us, the “C.H.O.M.E.S.” acronym for the Great Lakes just doesn’t pack the same punch that “H.O.M.E.S.” does. You can probably understand why some people weren’t exactly welcoming this new Great Lake with open arms.
Following oodles of criticism and controversy that were more focused on the distinction than anything related to research funding, congress rewrote the designation to remove the Great Lake mention. Its status was officially rescinded on March 24, 1998 and there were only five Great Lakes once more. Now 27 years later, it’s almost as if it never happened…except Lake Champlain continues to receive the federal Sea Grant funding allocated when it was briefly-but-officially declared to be the sixth Great Lake for less than a month in 1998. It may no longer be great, but it’s far better off now than it was before its 18 days of greatness.
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