West Okoboji Lake is a natural body of water, approximately 3,847 acres (15.57 km2) in area, in Dickinson County in northwest Iowa in the United States. It is part of the chain of lakes known as the Iowa Great Lakes. The area was long inhabited by the Santee or Dakota Sioux. The Dakota-language name for the lake was Minnetonka, meaning "great waters".
The cities of Arnolds Park, Okoboji, West Okoboji, and Wahpeton sit on its shore. Okoboji was derived from the Dakota name for the lake, and Wahpeton was the name of one of the major historic Sioux bands in the nineteenth century. Today the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux are a federally recognized tribe.
The lake's maximum depth is 136 feet (41 m), making it the deepest lake in Iowa and second in size only to Spirit Lake. The mean depth is 39 feet (12 m). The drainage area of the lake is approximately 125 square miles (320 km2).
Read more about West Okoboji Lake: Geology, Recreation
Famous quotes containing the words west and/or lake:
“Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)