Crater Lake summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Crater Lake.

Crater Lake, Lake, Cascade Range, southwestern Oregon, U.S. The lake is in a huge volcanic caldera 6 mi (10 km) in diameter and is 1,943 ft (592 m) deep—the deepest lake in the United States. It is the remnant of a mountain destroyed in an eruption about 7,700 years ago. The intensely blue lake and its surrounding region became a national park in 1902; the park covers 286 sq mi (741 sq km).

Oregon Summary

Oregon, constituent state of the United States of America. Oregon is bounded to the north by Washington state, from which it receives the waters of the Columbia River; to the east by Idaho, more than half the border with which is formed by the winding Snake River and Hells Canyon; to the south by

United States Summary

United States, country in North America, a federal republic of 50 states. Besides the 48 conterminous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska, at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii, in the

Lake Ann in North Cascades National Park, Washington

lake Summary

Lake, any relatively large body of slowly moving or standing water that occupies an inland basin of appreciable size. Definitions that precisely distinguish lakes, ponds, swamps, and even rivers and other bodies of nonoceanic water are not well established. It may be said, however, that rivers and

North America Summary

North America, third largest of the world’s continents, lying for the most part between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer. It extends for more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) to within 500 miles (800 km) of both the North Pole and the Equator and has an east-west extent of 5,000 miles. It