Great Lakes

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Chain of lakes, east-central North America. Comprising Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, it forms a natural boundary between the U.S. and Canada. The Great Lakes cover an area of about 94,850 sq mi (245,660 sq km) and constitute the largest freshwater surface in the world. Connected to form a single waterway that discharges down the St. Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean, with the St. Lawrence Seaway they form a shipping lane more than 2,000 mi (3,200 km) long that carries oceangoing traffic as far west as Duluth, Minn. Large quantities of iron ore, coal, grain, and manufactured goods are moved between lake ports and shipped overseas. While commercial fishing was once a major industry on the lakes, pollution and other factors led to its collapse; recovery has been slow and partial. The lakes are used for many recreational activities, including boating and sailing.

For more information on Great Lakes, visit Britannica.com.

The Great Lakes, also called the Inland Seas, consist of five connecting freshwater lakes in east central North America that straddle the international border between Canada and the United States. Collectively they constitute the world's largest body of freshwater, with a surface area of 94,000 square miles (244,000 sq. km) and 5,500 cubic miles (23,000 cu. km) of water. The lakes contain approximately 18 percent of the world's supply of freshwater, with only the polar ice caps having more. From west to east, the lakes are Superior (the largest and deepest of the lakes), Michigan, Huron, Erie (the shallowest), and Ontario (the smallest); they collectively extend about 850 miles (1370 km) west to east and 700 miles (1125 km) from north to south. The Great Lakes form the western portion of the greater St. Lawrence hydrographic system, extending from Minnesota to the Atlantic Ocean.

Lake Superior connects to Huron through Sault Sainte Marie (St. Marys River), and Lake Michigan joins Huron via the Straits of Mackinac. A major inlet north of Lake Huron is Georgian Bay, which lies entirely within Canada. Waters from the three upper Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, and Huron) flow through the St. Clair River, Lake St. Claire, and the Detroit River into Lake Erie, which in turn is connected to Lake Ontario through the Niagara River and Niagara Falls. The five lakes then drain northeastward into the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawrence River. The Great Lakes' drainage basin covers 295,200 square miles (764,570 sq. km) and includes portions of eight states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York) and the Canadian province of Ontario, which extends along the north shore of four of the lakes. Lake Michigan lies entirely within the boundaries of the United States; the international boundary bisects the other four lakes.

Geologically, the Great Lakes system began to develop three million years ago, during the Precambrian Era, a time of volcanic activity and geological stress that formed major mountain systems that later eroded. Most of central North America was covered by marine seas during the Paleozoic Era, and major continental glaciers advanced over the Great Lakes region beginning about one million years ago. As a result of a series of glacial formations and retreats, glacial deposits and large volumes of meltwater created a basin larger than the present-day Great Lakes. The most recent Great Lakes basin formed between 32,000 and 10,000 years ago; lake levels stabilized about 2,400 years ago. Five biotic provinces are defined on the basis of floral and faunal characteristics, and include Hudsonian to the extreme north, Canadian (Georgian Bay, Lake Nipissing, and the Ottawa River), Carolinian-Canadian Transition (present-day Wisconsin, Michigan, and southern Ontario), Illinoisan (southern Lake Michigan basin), and Carolinian (Ohio, Pennsylvania, and western New York).

Paleo-Indian hunters and gatherers occupied the Great Lakes basin before 9500 B.C.E. and were followed by semisedentary Early Archaic peoples who exploited a wider variety of large and small fauna and diverse flora. More populous and technologically advanced Late Archaic peoples formed small sedentary communities beginning in 3,000 B.C.E. The Archaic-Woodland Transition (1500–100 B.C.E.) was characterized by large sedentary villages, plant domestication, the development of pottery, and cultural adaptations to diverse econiches. The Middle Woodland period (c. 200 B.C.E.–500 C.E.) saw the development of Hopewell culture in Ohio and adjacent states, characterized by circular and serpentine earthworks, enormous artificial mounds, elaborate burial practices, and long-distance trade systems for exotic goods used in burials, such as marine shells from Florida and obsidian from Wyoming. Other areas of the Great Lakes continued an Early Woodland pattern.

The subsequent Late Woodland period (500–1600 C.E.) saw the incursions of peoples and ideas from the Mississippi Valley; an emphasis on the cultivation of maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers; larger populations and settlements; and territorial conflicts between tribes. At European contact a number of major tribes were established in the Great Lakes basin, among them the Ojibwe, Me-nominee, Winnebago, Miami, Potawatomi, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, and Mascouten tribes in the upper Great Lakes region, and the Erie, Iroquois (Seneca, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Mohawk), and Wenro south of lakes Erie and Ontario, with the Ottawa, Petun, Huron, and Neutral tribes north of those lakes. Miamis, Mascoutens, Mesquakies, and Shawnees occupied the area around Lake Michigan.

The French explorer Jacques Cartier, seeking a northwest passage to the Orient, located the St. Lawrence River during the years of 1534 and 1535. Samuel de Champlain visited lakes Ontario and Huron in 1610, initiating a period of French exploration characterized by missionaries, fur traders, and territorial conflicts between the emerging New France and British colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. The Ottawa River provided a route for Jesuit missionaries and French trappers and traders, who soon visited the upper lakes. Jean Nicolet reached the shores of Lake Michigan in 1634, and Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbault ventured to Sault Sainte Marie seven years later. By 1672 the Jesuits had compiled and published an accurate map of Lake Superior. The Iroquois Wars (1641–1701) and a period of French incursion, settlement, and fortifications (1720–1761) followed. By 1673 Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette had begun explorations of the upper Mississippi River, followed by Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and his expedition (1678–1684). By 1683 a highly accurate map of all the Great Lakes, based on these and other expeditions and journeys, was compiled by Father Louis Hennepin.

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Drawn by the fur trade and seeking new lands, English traders from Albany began to explore the upper Great Lakes in the 1690s. To counter this, in 1701 Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac established Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, which commanded the narrow river between Lake Erie and Lake Huron. It became the focus of French control of the upper lakes and denied access to English traders and exploration. The conflict between the English and French for the control of North America, which centered on the Great Lakes, involved a series of wars and minor conflicts that covered a period of seventy-five years and included participation by Native Americans on both sides. The French and Indian War culminated with the surrender of French Canada to the British in 1760. Pontiac's War (1763–1764) heralded a transitional period with American exploration, migrations, and settlement of the region along the southern shores of the Great Lakes. Notably the Definitive Treaty of Peace signed between Britain and the United States in 1783, ending the Revolutionary War, included an article that called for control of the lakes to be shared between British Canada and the American colonies.

The War of 1812 (1812–1815), between the Americans and the British, also involved Native Americans on both sides in the region of Detroit and the Niagara Frontier. Many of the engagements were fought on and adjoining the Great Lakes. A major naval engagement, the battle of Lake Erie (10 September 1813), was won by the Americans and helped to ensure the sovereignty of the United States through the Treaty of Ghent (1814) and the Rush-Bagot Agreement (1817), which established limitations on naval forces on the Great Lakes.

The promise of agricultural land was a major attraction for immigrants; hence agrarian settlements and fisheries developed on both the American and the Canadian sides of the border during the 1800s. City building, nation building, and industrialization were hallmarks of the nineteenth century as dairying, fruit and vegetable cultivation, logging, and forest exploitation gave way to iron and steel production, papermaking, and chemical manufacture in the twentieth century. The forests around the Great Lakes provided hardwoods and pine, while the Lake Superior region yielded high-quality iron ore and copper. Major agricultural products included corn, wheat, soybeans, grapes, pork, and beef cattle. The industry of the region was, and remains, highly diversified, but significant quantities of iron ore, coal, minerals, grain, and manufactured products are transported throughout the Great Lakes and shipped overseas. Notable transportation improvements included the construction of the Erie Canal, from Albany to Buffalo, New York (completed in 1825); the Canadian Lachine Canal, bypassing rapids in the St. Lawrence River; and the Welland Canal (1829), joining lakes Erie and Ontario. The latter two were surpassed in 1959 by the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Commercial fishing began about 1820 and peaked between 1889 and 1899 but native fish diminished and have been replaced by introduced species. Sport fishing, water recreation, and cultural tourism have become economically significant in spite of a deterioration in water quality and habitat that accompanied urbanization and industrialization. Pollution, pathogens, eutrophication, toxic contaminants, diminished oxygen levels, the introduction of exotic flora and fauna (such as zebra mussels), and a recent drop in lake water levels are of major concern to inhabitants of the Great Lakes basin.

Perhaps surprisingly, a number of upper Great Lakes cities were founded earlier than many of the settlements situated along the shores of the lower lakes. In the main lakes the early settlements were fur trading posts, such as Green Bay in modern Wisconsin at the mouth of the Fox River, established in 1634 and with a population of more than 103,000 by 2000. Other posts were established at Chicago in 1673; at Thunder Bay, Ontario, in 1678; and at Duluth, Minnesota, in 1692. In the lower lakes Hamilton, Ontario, was established in 1669 and by 2000 was an industrial center with 320,000 inhabitants; Buffalo, New York, a former Seneca Indian village settled by Europeans in 1679, was by 2000 an industrial city with more than 300,000 inhabitants. Detroit, settled in 1701, has become a center of automotive production and has a population exceeding 1,045,000 in 2000. Established in 1720, Toronto, now the capital of the province of Ontario and a financial and commercial center, had a 2000 census of 640,000. Because explorers, missionaries, and travelers could bypass Lake Erie by venturing from Lake Ontario and the Ontario River to the upper lakes, settlements along Lake Erie were founded late in the region's history. These include Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1753 (in 2000 an industrial and agricultural community of 105,000); Cleveland, Ohio, in 1786 (a major center of heavy industry with a population exceeding 506,000 in 2000); London, Ontario, in 1792 (by 2000 an industrial and agricultural center with more than 303,000 persons); and Toledo, Ohio, in 1794 (another industrial community, with 323,000 persons in 2000). Rochester, New York, now a center for imaging science, was founded on the Genessee River, which flows into Lake Ontario, in 1789; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, situated at the mouth of the river of the same name, was founded in 1800 and was a major center of the brewing industry. In 2000 Rochester had a population of 217,000, and Milwaukee's census exceeded 617,000. Chicago grew from a trading post to become a leading rail and lake transport hub, as well as an industrial and commercial center with a population of 2,840,000 in 2000.

Bibliography

Ashworth, William. Great Lakes Journey: A New Look at America's Fresh-water Coast. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000.

Bogue, Margaret B. Around the Shores of Lake Superior: A Guide to Historic Sites. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.

———. Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environmental History, 1783–1933. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.

Burns, Noel M. Erie: The Lake That Survived. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985.

Cantor, George. The Great Lakes Guidebook, 3 vols. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978–1980.

———. The Great Lakes Guidebook: Lake Huron and Eastern Lake Michigan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985.

———. The Great Lakes Guidebook: Lakes Ontario and Erie. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985.

Gentilcore, R. Louis, ed. Historical Atlas of Canada, vol. 2: The Land Transformed, 1800–1891. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.

Government of Canada and United States Environmental Protection Agency. Great Lakes Factsheet No. 1. In The Great Lakes: An Environmental Atlas and Resource Book, 3d ed., 1995. Available from http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/atlas/fact1txt.html.

Harris, R. Cole, ed. Historical Atlas of Canada, vol. 1: From the Beginning to 1800. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.

Hatcher, Harlan H. The Great Lakes. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1944.

———. Lake Erie. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1945. Reprinted Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1971.

Hatcher, Harlan H., and Erich A. Walter. Pictorial History of the Great Lakes. New York: Crown, 1963.

Hough, Jack L. Geology of the Great Lakes. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958.

Karpinski, Louis C. Maps of Famous Cartographers Depicting North America: An Historical Atlas of the Great Lakes and Michigan, 2d ed. Amsterdam: Meridian, 1977. First published 1880.

Kerr, Donald, ed. Historical Atlas of Canada, vol. 3: Addressing the Twentieth Century, 1891–1961. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.

Kuchenberg, Tom. Reflections in a Tarnished Mirror: The Use and Abuse of the Great Lakes. Sturgeon Bay, Wis.: Golden Glow, 1978.

Landon, Fred. Lake Huron. New York: Russell & Russell, 1972. First published 1944.

Ludwigson, John O. Two Nations, One Lake: Science in Support of Great Lakes Management. Ottawa: Canadian National Committee for International Hydrological Decade, 1974.

Mason, Ronald J. Great Lakes Archaeology. New York: Academic Press, 1981.

McGucken, William. Lake Erie Rehabilitated: Controlling Cultural Eutrophication, 1960s–1990s. Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2000.

Office of the Great Lakes. Great Lakes Trends: Into the New Millennium. Lansing: Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, 2000.

Pound, Arthur. Lake Ontario. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1970.

Skaggs, David C. A Signal Victory: The Lake Erie Campaign. 1812–1813. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press. 1997.

St. John, John R. A True Description of the Lake Superior Country. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Black Letter-Press, 1976.

Tanner, Helen H., ed. Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press for The Newberry Library, 1987.

Thompson, Mark L. Graveyard of the Lakes. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000.

Thwaites, Reuben Gold. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. 73 vols. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1896–1901.

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Temperature: 64°F / 17°C RealFeel Temperature™: 64°F / 17°C Humidity: 86% Winds: SW 6 mph / 10 kmh Pressure: 30.03" Visibility: 10 mi. / 16 km

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An aerial view showing a special recruit graduation "Pass in Review" Ceremony held at Ross Field, Naval Training Center Great Lakes.

Naval Station Great Lakes is the United States Navy's Headquarters Command for training issues, located in North Chicago, Illinois. Important tenant commands include the Recruit Training Center (Basic Training), Training Support Center and Naval Recruiting District Chicago.

Major Tenant Commands

Recruit Training Command

RTC Great Lakes is the Navy's only basic training facility.

Training Support Center

TSC Great Lakes is the Navy's premier technical training command. It has an annual throughput of 16,000 sailors a year. TSC supports the following five learning sites:

• Center for Surface Combat Systems (CSCS)
• Center for Naval Engineering (CNE)
• Center for EOD and Dive (CNEODD)
• Center for Naval Leadership (CNL)
• Center for Personal Development (CPD)
• Center for Service Support (CSS)

BRAC 2005

Great Lakes NTC (Naval Training Command) and RTC (Recruit Training Command - the Boot Camp portion) are not in danger of closing. Several hundred million dollars have been invested in building new barracks ("ships"), a $72,000,000 training facility, as well as numerous upgrades around the base. It is the United States Navy's only boot camp facility. Great Lakes Naval Recruit Training Command (RTC) in Illinois is the central processing location for Naval recruits. Approximately 50,000 recruits pass through Great Lakes RTC annually with up to 25,000 recruits onboard the installation at any time.

Geographically, the station separates the affluent North Shore from the more industrial Waukegan/North Chicago area, the latter now announcing numerous redevelopments across their span for strip malls and New Urban residency communities.

The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Great Lakes Naval Training Station historic district in 1986 covering  acres ( km²), 43 buildings, 14 structures, 6 objects.

Public Safety

The Naval Station Great Lakes Department of Public Safety encompasses fire, police and security needs at Great Lakes.

Law enforcement is provided by the Great Lakes Police Department, a civilian agency with dozens of officers. Great Lakes police officers are fully recognized by the state of Illinois and have full arrest powers over all personnel, military and civilian. The current Chief of Police is Victor Fuentes.

The Great Lakes Police Department is a member of North East Multi-Regional Training (NEMRT), where officers receive continuing education along with police officers from the Chicago area.

Great Lakes police officers are represented by the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters, Local 714, Law Enforcement Division.

The Great Lakes Fire Department is a civilian agency which is affiliated with MABAS, the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, and frequently assists other area fire departments. Great Lakes firefighters provide fire protection and inspection services, as well as paramedic and Advanced Life Support services at Great Lakes.

Great Lakes firefighters are represented by the International Association of Firefighters.

Navy Master-at-Arms billets are generally assigned to physical security and administrative duties.

References

External links

• Naval Station Great Lakes - Official Website
• Navy.com - Boot Training
• Gov. Blagojevich Vows To Fight For Great Lakes Naval Training Center And Do Everything Possible To Save Any Jobs In Jeopardy
• Great Lakes Naval Training Station - National Register District

Coordinates: 42.3091892° N 87.8500708° W

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