The Arrow Lakes in British Columbia, Canada, divided into Upper Arrow Lake and Lower Arrow Lake, are widenings of the Columbia River. The lakes are situated between the Selkirk Mountains to the east and the Monashee Mountains to the west. Beachland is fairly rare, and is interspersed with rocky headlands and steep cliffs. Mountain sides are heavily forested, and rise sharply to elevations around 2,600 metres.
Originally two lakes, the Arrow Lakes became one 230 km long lake due to the reservoir created by the 1960s construction of the Keenleyside Dam; at low water the two lakes remain distinct, connected by a fast-moving section known as the Narrows. Damming the lake resulted in water rising 12 meters above natural levels. As a result of higher water, the valley lost 2/3 of its arable land. Thousands of people relocated. The lake stretches from just north of Castlegar in the south to Revelstoke in the north. Another hydroelectric development diverted Whatshan Lake from the Whatshan River directly into the Arrow Lakes, just north of the Needles-Fauquier Ferry.
There are two free highway ferries across the Upper Arrow Lake: the Upper Arrow Lakes Ferry between Shelter Bay and Galena Bay at the northern end of Upper Arrow Lake; and the Needles Cable Ferry further south, on BC Hwy 6 between Nakusp and Vernon. There is also the Arrow Park Ferry, a cable ferry connecting East Arrow Park and West Arrow Park about 28 km south of Nakusp.
The Arrow Lakes are part of the traditional territory claims of the Sinixt, Okanagan and Ktunaxa peoples, though at the time of contact and during colonization only Sinixt lived along its shores.
Read more about Arrow Lakes: Name Origin
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“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water,—so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)