Coal Lake is a long, sinuous lake located approximately southeast of the city of

Edmonton Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...

, just northeast of the city of

Wetaskiwin Wetaskiwin ( ) is a city in the province of Alberta, Canada. The city is located south of the provincial capital of Edmonton. The city name comes from the Cree word , meaning "the hills where peace was made". Wetaskiwin is home to the Reyn ...

. The lake is in one of the glacial

meltwater channel A meltwater channel (or sometimes a glacial meltwater channel) is a channel cut into ice, bedrock or unconsolidated deposits by the flow of water derived from the melting of a glacier or ice-sheet. The channel may form on the surface of, within, ...

s (the

North Saskatchewan River The North Saskatchewan River is a glacier-fed river that flows from the Canadian Rockies continental divide east to central Saskatchewan, where it joins with the South Saskatchewan River to make up the Saskatchewan River. Its water flows event ...

follows another) formed when the of Lake Edmonton, which existed for roughly 100 years at the end of the last

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...

, breached its ice dam and drained within a few weeks. The entire meltwater channel starts east of

Nisku Nisku is a hamlet (place), hamlet and an industrial/business park in Alberta, Canada, within Leduc County. It has an elevation of . The hamlet and industrial/business park are located in census division Division No. 11, Alberta, No. 11 and in t ...

, wandering southeast through minor depressions and the chain of Saunders Lake, Ord Lake, three small unnamed lakes, Coal Lake and Driedmeat Lake. Coal Lake starts east of Kavanagh, Alberta, and ends at a dam built northwest of Gwynne, Alberta. Since construction of the dam in 1972, Pipestone Creek flows through the southern end of Coal Lake, draining the lake into the Battle River, southeast of Coal Lake. Coal Lake was named in 1892 by J.D.A. Fitzpatrick, a Dominion

Land Surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually on the ...

, for the coal beds present in many places along the northeast shore.

References

See also