What is the difference between mountain/hill/peak; lake/pond; or river/creek?
There are no official definitions for generic terms as applied to geographic names. Every organization will have a definition that is application driven, and no one office definition is accepted as official. The difference is thematic and beyond that it is highly perceptive. The difference between lake and pond is an example. The United States Geological Surveys (USGS) Geographic Names Office, in developing the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database, has define lake as “natural body of inland water,” and not necessarily applicable to another’s needs. The only area of general agreement is that perceptibly, a pond is smaller than a lake, but even this is not always true. The USGS classify all “linear flowing bodies of water” as stream, a rather neutral term for our use. Many perceptibly insist that a creek must flow into a river but there are many examples where a river flows into a creek. Many controversies exist with mountain/hill. A mountain is generally a natural elevati
