The Great Lakes include Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron,
Lake, Erie, and Lake Ontario. You can remember them by thinking of
the word HOMES which takes the first letter of each lake to make the
word.
The Great Lakes give us the largest supply of fresh water on the
earth. These lakes are bordered by the six Midwestern states of
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Only Lake
Michigan is entirely within the United States borders while the other
lakes are bordered on the north by Canada which is another
country.
The Great Lakes are connected to each other by a series of dams,
lakes and rivers. You could travel on the Great Lakes starting at the
city of Duluth, Minnesota on Lake Superior and get all the way to the
Atlantic Ocean. The trip would cover about 2,340 miles. All of these
dam, lakes, and rivers were linked together when the United States
and Canada agreed to develop the Saint Lawrence Seaway which was
completed in 1959. Today great ships travel this passage carrying
grain, taconite ore, timber and other cargos. Some of the cities
located on the great lakes are: Duluth, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois;
Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York; and, Toronto,
Canada.
About
twenty thousand years ago the temperature got very cold and a great
ice mass, called a glacier, covered Canada and parts of the United
States. The glacier moved down covering over the United States as far
as Missouri. As the glacier moved down it would scrape and grind the
land, carving out the places where canyons, river, and lakes would
later remain. At times the temperature would begin to warm up and the
glacier would start to melt leaving water in these areas. This
happened several times. It was this glacier that created the great
lakes.
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