Lake Erie
one of the Great Lakes in North America
Lake Erie ( EER-ee) is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest average water residence time. At its deepest point, Lake Erie is 210 feet (64 m) deep, making it the only Great Lake whose deepest point is above sea level.
Located on the International Boundary between Canada and the United States, Lake Erie's northern shore is the Canadian province of Ontario, specifically the Ontario Peninsula, with the U.S. states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York on its western, southern, and eastern shores. These jurisdictions divide the surface area of the lake with water boundaries. The largest city on the lake is Cleveland, anchoring the third largest U.S. metro area in the Great Lakes region, after Greater Chicago and Metro Detroit. Other major cities along the lake shore include Buffalo, New York; Erie, Pennsylvania; and Toledo, Ohio.
Situated below Lake Huron, Erie's primary inlet is the Detroit River. The main natural outflow from the lake is via the Niagara River, which provides hydroelectric power to Canada and the U.S. as it spins huge turbines near Niagara Falls at Lewiston, New York, and Queenston, Ontario. Some outflow occurs via the Welland Canal, part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, which diverts water for ship passages from Port Colborne, Ontario, on Lake Erie, to St.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lake Erie” as one of the Great Lakes in North America. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5492. VIAF identifies the subject as 238370584. The Library of Congress control number is sh85044620. Authority coordinates are 42.250, -81.000. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lake Erie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.