Mendenhall Lake is a proglacial

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much lar ...

in the Mendenhall Valley at the 1962 terminus of

Mendenhall Glacier Mendenhall Glacier (in Tlingit language “Sít”) is a glacier about long located in Mendenhall Valley, about from downtown Juneau, Alaska, Juneau in the southeast area of the U.S. state of Alaska. The glacier and surrounding landscape is p ...

, north of the

Juneau Airport Juneau International Airport is a city-owned, public-use airport and seaplane base located seven nautical miles (8 mi, 13 km) northwest of the central business district of Juneau, a city and borough in the U.S. state of Alaska ...

in the

Coast Mountains The Coast Mountains (french: La chaîne Côtière) are a major mountain range in the Pacific Coast Ranges of western North America, extending from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Colum ...

. It is the source of the short

Mendenhall River The Mendenhall River (Lingít: ''Woosh Ilʼóox̱ʼu Héen'') is an Alaskan river north of Juneau in the Mendenhall Valley. The river begins at the Mendenhall Lake, at the base of the Mendenhall Glacier. Rafting on the river The Mendenhall is abou ...

. The lake is included in the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area of the

Tongass National Forest The Tongass National Forest () in Southeast Alaska is the largest U.S. National Forest at . Most of its area is temperate rain forest and is remote enough to be home to many species of endangered and rare flora and fauna. The Tongass, which is ...

.Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area Planning

United States Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency inc ...

Name

Like other geographic features with Mendenhall in their title, Mendenhall Lake is named for

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...

and

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists in research, while th ...

Thomas Corwin Mendenhall Thomas Corwin Mendenhall (October 4, 1841 – March 23, 1924) was an American autodidact physicist and meteorologist. He was the first professor hired at Ohio State University in 1873 and the superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey ...

. Local name derived from the Mendenhall Glacier and published in 1962 by

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

. In 1909, the lake was called McCush Lake by miners because Neil McCush had mining property near it (DeArmond, 1957, p. 31).

References

External links

* Lakes of Juneau, Alaska Lakes of Alaska Proglacial lakes {{JuneauAK-geo-stub