Geography & Countries

The Deepest Lakes in North America

Ranked strictly by maximum depth, not surface area — Lake Superior may dwarf the rest of the Great Lakes by size, but it isn't even the deepest lake on the continent; that title belongs to a remote lake in Canada's Northwest Territories.

Great Slave Lake, the deepest lake in North America, in the Northwest Territories, Canada
Rank Lake Max Depth Country
1Great Slave Lake614 mCanada
2Crater Lake594 mUnited States
3Quesnel Lake511 mCanada
4Lake Tahoe501 mUnited States
5Adams Lake457 mCanada
6Lake Chelan453 mUnited States
7Lake Superior406 mUnited States, Canada
8Lake Pend Oreille350 mUnited States
9Atlin Lake289 mCanada
10Okanagan Lake232 mCanada
11Seneca Lake188 mUnited States

The Top 5

#1

Great Slave Lake — 614 m

North America's deepest lake and the world's tenth-largest by area, in Canada's Northwest Territories; the territorial capital, Yellowknife, sits right on its northern shore.[1]

#2

Crater Lake — 594 m

The deepest lake in the United States, filling the caldera left after Mount Mazama collapsed in a volcanic eruption roughly 7,700 years ago; it has no rivers flowing in or out, fed and drained solely by rain and snowmelt.[1]

#3

Quesnel Lake — 511 m

British Columbia's deepest lake and thought to be the deepest fjord lake in the world, carved by glaciers in the Cariboo Mountains and still fed by their meltwater today.[1]

#4

Lake Tahoe — 501 m

Straddling the California–Nevada border in the Sierra Nevada, it's the largest alpine lake in North America and so clear that a white dinner plate remains visible dozens of meters below the surface.[1]

#5

Adams Lake — 457 m

A long, narrow glacial lake in British Columbia's Shuswap region, second only to Quesnel among the province's deepest lakes, and famous among anglers for its landlocked rainbow trout.[1]

Geography Lakes North America

Sources

  1. Maximum-depth figures aggregated from lake-depth reference compilations, provincial/state geographic surveys, and the U.S. National Park Service (for Crater Lake).