Earth:Mendenhall Lake

Short description: Lake in the United States

Mendenhall Lake
The lake, mostly frozen over, and the Mendenhall Glacier
Mendenhall Lake Mendenhall Lake
Location	Juneau, Alaska
Coordinates
rivers, streams, precipitation">Primary inflows	Mendenhall Glacier, Steep Creek, Nugget Creek
rivers, streams, evaporation">Primary outflows	Mendenhall River
Basin countries	United States
Max. width	1.8 miles (2.9 km)
Surface elevation	52 ft (16 m)

Mendenhall Lake is a proglacial lake in the Mendenhall Valley at the 1962 terminus of Mendenhall Glacier, three miles (4.8 km) north of the Juneau Airport in the Coast Mountains. It is the source of the short Mendenhall River. The lake is included in the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area of the Tongass National Forest.

Name

Like other geographic features with Mendenhall in their title, Mendenhall Lake is named for physicist and meteorologist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall.

Local name derived from the Mendenhall Glacier and published in 1962 by United States Geological Survey. In 1909, the lake was called McCush Lake by miners because Neil McCush had mining property near it (DeArmond, 1957, p. 31).

References

Melting ice on Mendenhall Lake near the start of the Mendenhall River with Nugget Falls in the background. For reference, the glacier is to the left and visitor center to the right.