North America is soaked. Honestly, when you look at a satellite map, the continent looks less like a solid mass of land and more like a Swiss cheese of blue patches and winding silver lines. We’re talking about bodies of water in north america that range from the massive, inland seas we call the Great Lakes to the "river of grass" in the Everglades. Most people can name the Mississippi or the Pacific, but there’s a massive amount of nuance to how these waters actually function, why they’re changing, and which ones are actually worth your time if you're planning a trip or buying property.
Water isn't just scenery here. It's the literal backbone of the economy. If the Great Lakes were a country, their GDP would rank among the top in the world. But beyond the money, there’s a weirdness to North American hydrology that you don’t find elsewhere. You’ve got the Great Salt Lake, which is basically a remnant of a prehistoric monster lake, and the Rio Grande, which sometimes doesn't even reach the sea anymore because we've sucked it dry for alfalfa and almonds.
The Great Lakes are actually just one giant puddle
We treat the Great Lakes like five separate entities. Geologically? That's kinda a lie. Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are technically one body of water because they’re joined at the Straits of Mackinac. They sit at the same elevation. They rise and fall together. When you stand on the Mackinac Bridge, you aren't looking at two lakes meeting; you're looking at a 120-mile-wide hydrologic throat.
The scale is hard to wrap your head around. These lakes hold about 21% of the world's surface freshwater. That is a staggering amount of liquid. If you poured all that water over the lower 48 states, the entire country would be under 9.5 feet of water.
Why Lake Superior feels like an ocean
Lake Superior is the king. It’s cold. It’s deep. It’s dangerous. Unlike the shallower Lake Erie, which warms up enough for people to actually swim in without turning blue, Superior stays frigid year-round. It contains more water than all the other Great Lakes combined, plus three extra Lake Eries.
Because it's so deep (1,332 feet at its lowest point), it creates its own weather. You get "lake-effect snow" that can bury a town in four feet of powder overnight. It’s also home to some of the most famous shipwrecks in history, including the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which went down in 1975 during a storm that produced waves tall enough to swallow a freighter. The water is so cold that bacteria don't grow quickly, meaning the bodies of those lost in the lake often don't decompose the way they would in warmer waters. It’s a literal freshwater graveyard.
The Mississippi River and the plumbing of a continent
The Mississippi is the heavy lifter. It drains parts of 31 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. But here’s the thing: it’s not just a river anymore. It’s a massive, highly engineered machine. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has spent over a century trying to keep the river exactly where it is.
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Left to its own devices, the Mississippi would have jumped its banks decades ago. It wants to shift west to the Atchafalaya River. This is a natural process called deltaic switching. Basically, rivers get "lazy" and want to find the shortest, steepest path to the sea. The Old River Control Structure is a series of massive concrete gates that prevents this from happening. If those gates ever failed, the ports of New Orleans and Baton Rouge would essentially become stagnant lagoons, and the American economy would take a hit it might never recover from.
The Missouri River: The real longest river?
Geographers love to argue about this. If you measure from the source of the Missouri River in the Rocky Mountains all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, it's actually longer than the "official" Mississippi. The Missouri is nicknamed "The Big Muddy" for a reason. It carries a ridiculous amount of sediment.
When these two giants meet near St. Louis, you can actually see the line where the clear(ish) Mississippi water hits the silt-heavy Missouri water. They don't mix right away. They run side-by-side like two lanes on a highway for miles.
The "Third Coast" and the Gulf of Mexico
People talk about the East Coast and the West Coast, but the Gulf of Mexico is North America’s "Third Coast." It’s a Mediterranean-style sea tucked between the U.S., Mexico, and Cuba. It’s warm, shallow, and incredibly productive. It provides about 16% of U.S. oil production and supports a multi-billion dollar fishing industry.
But it’s also in trouble. Every summer, a "Dead Zone" forms off the coast of Louisiana. This isn't some sci-fi mystery; it's caused by all that nitrogen and phosphorus from Midwestern farms washing down the Mississippi. The nutrients cause algae blooms, the algae dies and sinks, and the decomposition sucks all the oxygen out of the water. Fish literally have to swim away or suffocate. It’s a massive environmental footprint of our food system that most people never see because it's underwater.
Salty surprises in the West
You can't talk about bodies of water in north america without mentioning the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It’s a remnant of Lake Bonneville, a massive freshwater lake from the last Ice Age. Now, it’s a terminal lake. Water goes in, but it doesn't flow out. It only leaves through evaporation, which leaves salt behind.
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It’s way saltier than the ocean. In some parts, you can’t even sink; you just bob on the surface like a cork. But there’s a crisis here. The lake is shrinking. As it dries up, it exposes a lakebed filled with arsenic and other heavy metals from old mining runoff. When the wind blows, that toxic dust gets carried into Salt Lake City. It’s one of the most pressing environmental disasters in the West right now.
The Salton Sea: A beautiful accident
California has its own weird water story. The Salton Sea wasn't supposed to be there. In 1905, an irrigation canal from the Colorado River burst. For two years, the entire flow of the Colorado River poured into a dry lakebed in the desert.
For a while, it was a glamorous resort destination. In the 1950s, it saw more tourists than Yosemite. Now? It’s a ghost town. The water is getting saltier and more polluted every year. Thousands of fish die at once, lining the shores with white bones. It’s a stark reminder of what happens when humans try to "fix" the plumbing of the desert and then walk away when it gets messy.
The Arctic and the North: Great Bear and Great Slave
Up in the Canadian North, you find waters that are virtually untouched by the industrial madness of the lower latitudes. Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories are behemoths.
Great Slave Lake is the deepest lake in North America, plunging down over 2,000 feet. It’s named after the Slavey people (Dene), not the institution of slavery, though the name is often misunderstood. These lakes are covered in ice for most of the year. They are some of the most pristine freshwater ecosystems left on Earth, but they are warming faster than almost anywhere else. As the permafrost melts around them, the chemistry of the water is changing, and the fish—like the giant lake trout—are feeling the heat.
The Everglades: The river you can walk through
Florida’s Everglades are often called a swamp. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the legendary conservationist, corrected that: it’s a "River of Grass." It’s a sheet of water, miles wide and only inches deep, moving slowly southward from Lake Okeechobee to the Florida Bay.
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It is a unique ecosystem—the only place on Earth where alligators and crocodiles coexist in the wild. But it’s been sliced and diced by canals for decades to make room for sugar farms and suburban sprawl. Restoration projects are currently trying to "un-plumb" South Florida to get the water moving naturally again. It’s a billion-dollar gamble to save the state's drinking water supply.
Why this matters for the future
We’re moving into an era of "water volatility." In the West, the Colorado River—which provides water for 40 million people—is at historically low levels. Reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell have "bathtub rings" showing how much water has been lost to drought and overuse.
Meanwhile, in the East and Midwest, there’s often too much water. Flooding along the Tennessee and Ohio rivers is becoming more frequent and more intense. We are seeing a geographic reorganization of where it's safe and sustainable to live based entirely on these bodies of water in north america.
What you should actually do with this info
If you're a traveler, stop sticking to the coasts. The "inland seas" of the Great Lakes offer "ocean-style" vacations without the salt or the sharks. Traverse City, Michigan, or the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin are world-class.
If you're looking at the long-term, pay attention to watersheds. The Great Lakes Compact is a legal agreement that basically says you can't pump Great Lakes water out of the basin. As water becomes more valuable than oil, living inside that basin is a huge hedge against future shortages.
Actionable Insights for Navigating North America’s Waters:
- Check Water Quality Reports: Before swimming in any major North American lake or river, check the local EPA or provincial "beach report." Algae blooms (cyanobacteria) are becoming more common in the summer and can be toxic to dogs and humans.
- Support Wetland Restoration: Wetlands act as the "kidneys" of our water systems. They filter out pollutants before they reach the big lakes. Organizations like Ducks Unlimited or the Everglades Foundation are doing the actual dirty work here.
- Monitor the "Line of Aridity": If you are moving or investing in the West, look at the 100th Meridian. Traditionally, this was the line where the humid east met the arid west. That line is effectively moving east. If you're on the edge, water rights are going to be your biggest legal headache in ten years.
- Visit the Great Lakes in the "Shoulder" Season: September and October are the best times. The water has spent all summer warming up, the crowds are gone, and the "lake effect" hasn't turned into a blizzard yet.
- Respect the Power: Never underestimate the current of the Mississippi or the waves of Lake Superior. These aren't swimming pools; they are powerful, indifferent natural systems. Always wear a PFD if you're in a small craft. Seriously.
North America's water is its greatest asset. We've spent a century polluting it, damming it, and diverting it. Now, we're finally starting to realize that we don't manage the water—the water manages us. Whether it’s the drying bed of the Rio Grande or the rising levels of the Atlantic, these bodies of water are the ones writing the next chapter of the continent's history.
Protect the headwaters. Conserve the aquifers. And maybe, just once, go stand on the shores of Lake Superior in a gale to remember how small we really are.