The Deepest Lakes in the United States

Ranked by maximum depth.

Depth tells a different story than surface area: Crater Lake, formed in a collapsed volcano, is the deepest in the country. Ranked here by maximum recorded depth.

#	Place	Max depth (ft)
1	Crater Lake The deepest lake in the United States	1,949 ft 594 m
2	Lake Tahoe A deep, clear alpine lake in the Sierra Nevada	1,644 ft 501 m
3	Lake Superior The largest freshwater lake in the world by area	1,332 ft 406 m
4	Iliamna Lake The largest lake in Alaska	988 ft 301 m
5	Lake Michigan The only Great Lake entirely within the United States	922 ft 281 m
6	Lake Ontario The smallest Great Lake by area, last before the Atlantic	801 ft 244 m
7	Lake Huron The Great Lake with the longest shoreline	751 ft 229 m
8	Lake Champlain A long, deep lake sometimes called the sixth Great Lake	400 ft 122 m
9	Lake Erie The shallowest and warmest of the Great Lakes	210 ft 64 m
10	The Salton Sea California's largest lake, created by accident and shrinking	43 ft 13 m
11	Great Salt Lake The largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere	33 ft 10 m
12	Red Lake The largest lake entirely within Minnesota	16 ft 5 m

Figures are drawn from standard government and reference sources and shown in both imperial and metric units. See each entry for full details and citations. Browse all guides or open the explore map.