Portsmouth Mine Pit Lake, sometimes called the Portsmouth Pit, is the deepest lake completely within the state of Minnesota. It has a depth of over 450 feet (137 m), according to the most recent Minnesota DNR data. Lake Superior, over 700 feet deep off the north shore of the state, is technically deeper. The 120-acre (49 ha) artificial lake is a former iron mining pit in the Cuyuna Range that has since filled with water.
The Portsmouth Mine Pit is part of the Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area, located in Crow Wing County. The lake is within Crosby city limits.
In the last five years, the Minnesota DNR has repeatedly stocked the lake with brook and rainbow trout.
On August 19, 1957, the mine pit, then not yet filled with water, served as launch site for a big stratospheric balloon; the second flight of the Air Force's Project Manhigh.
Famous quotes containing the words pit and/or lake:
“Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)