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:
“I know those little phrases that seem so innocuous and, once you let them in, pollute the whole of speech. Nothing is more real than nothing. They rise up out of the pit and know no rest until they drag you down into its dark.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)