What is Lake Ontario?
Lake Ontario is one of five large, connected, fresh-water glacial lakes in North America called the Great Lakes. Lake Ontario is the most eastern of the five and, because the lakes run from west to east, is the lake that receives the outflow last before the water flows via its outlet, the St. Lawrence River, into the Atlantic Ocean. Lake Ontario is directly connected to another Great Lake–Lake Erie–by its primary inlet, the Niagara River, which flows through the Niagara River Gorge and over Niagara Falls and Horseshoe Falls into Lake Ontario. Lake Ontario is bounded by seven New York State counties and the province of Ontario in Canada. Three of the New York State counties–Monroe, Wayne, and Cayuga–are in the Finger Lakes Region. Lake Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes, but compared to the 11 Finger Lakes, it’s huge, with visible tides and waves and storms that can be so severe as to sink large ships. Consequently, Lake Ontario has a number of lighthouses on both the Americ
