Lake Erie is the youngest of the Great Lakes in its present form, scooped out by continental glaciers that ground their way across soft shale and limestone and then melted back roughly 10,000 years ago. What the ice left behind is a lake unlike any of its sisters: at an average depth of only about 60 feet, Erie is by far the shallowest of the five lakes — and the warmest. Sunlight reaches deep, the western basin blooms with life, and the result is the most biologically productive of all the Great Lakes. It is also the stormiest; Erie's shallow water whips up fast, which is why its shores are dotted with lighthouses — and why generations of lake people respect it.
The water that fills Erie pours in from Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron by way of Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River, spends less than three years here — the shortest retention time of any Great Lake — and leaves over Niagara Falls. Our park sits on the lake's southwestern shore, on the Marblehead Peninsula and Catawba Island, at the edge of the western basin: the shallowest water of all, some of the richest fishing grounds on the continent, and the gateway to Ohio's island archipelago.
Stretching northeast from Catawba Island is a chain of limestone islands — the Lake Erie Islands. The largest Ohio islands are South Bass, Middle Bass, North Bass, and Kelleys Island, each with its own personality. South Bass Island is home to the village of Put-in-Bay, the lake's beloved summer port since the 1800s — the name, tradition holds, comes from sailors who "put in at the bay" to shelter from Erie's sudden weather. Kelleys Island, the largest of the American islands, is the quieter one: forests, vineyards, a state park, and a shoreline famous among geologists.
That fame is the Glacial Grooves on Kelleys Island's north shore — deep channels gouged into solid limestone by the passing ice sheet, among the most famous and accessible glacial carvings in the world. Stand there and you are looking at the signature of the same glacier that dug the lake itself: proof, written in rock, of just how recently this whole landscape was under a mile of ice.
On a September morning in 1813, in the waters just west of Put-in-Bay, the young United States Navy fought the battle that decided the Old Northwest. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry had built a nine-vessel squadron at Presque Isle (Erie, Pennsylvania) and anchored at Put-in-Bay to blockade British supply lines. When the British squadron under Captain Robert Barclay came out to fight, Perry engaged them from his flagship, the brig Lawrence, flying a battle flag lettered with Captain James Lawrence's dying words: "Don't Give Up the Ship."
The Lawrence was shot to pieces and Perry was rowed — through heavy fire, in an open boat — to the brig Niagara, from which he broke the British line and forced the surrender of the entire squadron: the first time in history a whole British naval squadron was captured intact. His dispatch to General William Henry Harrison became one of the most famous messages in American naval history: "We have met the enemy and they are ours." The victory secured Lake Erie for the United States, forced the British to abandon Detroit, and set up Harrison's triumph at the Battle of the Thames.
A century later, the three nations raised a monument on South Bass Island: Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial, a 352-foot Doric column — among the tallest monuments in America — completed in 1915 and administered today by the National Park Service. Beneath its floor lie three American and three British officers, buried together. It is the only international peace memorial in the National Park System, and on a clear day at the park, you can see its column standing over the water to the north. Visit the memorial's National Park Service page →
Ask anyone in Port Clinton and they'll tell you: this is the Walleye Capital of the World, and it isn't a slogan — it's statistics. Lake Erie's western basin holds the lake's great walleye spawning reefs, and the spring run up the Maumee and Sandusky rivers is one of the largest freshwater fish migrations anywhere. Lake Erie's walleye population is counted in the tens of millions, and the lake as a whole produces more fish for the table than all the other Great Lakes combined. Yellow perch and smallmouth bass fill out the year, and the town celebrates its title every New Year's Eve with the famous Walleye Drop in downtown Port Clinton. From West Harbor Club, the charter docks and launch ramps are minutes away — see fishing charters and lake activities.
Because the islands have no bridges, life here runs on ferries — and riding them is half the fun. The Miller Ferry has carried passengers and cars from the tip of Catawba Island to Put-in-Bay and Middle Bass since 1905, an 18-minute crossing that islanders treat as a commute and visitors treat as the start of vacation. The Jet Express runs high-speed passenger catamarans from downtown Port Clinton straight into the heart of Put-in-Bay, and to Kelleys Island and Cedar Point besides. A third service, the Kelleys Island Ferry, links Marblehead to Kelleys Island. In season, the boats run from early morning to late at night; in winter, when the lake freezes, island life slows to ice fishing, snowmobiles, and the occasional supply plane. To live at West Harbor Club is to live by that rhythm — the ferries are our neighbors' highway, and the islands are our other neighborhood.
The history is better in person. Here are the ferries, lighthouses, parks, and ports that make a West Harbor summer.
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