Lake Pend Oreille Map Art

Lake Pend Oreille, said POND-a-RAY, is the largest lake in Idaho, in the northern Panhandle. It runs 43 miles long, covers 148 square miles and reaches 1,152 feet deep in places, which makes it the fifth deepest lake in the nation. The Clark Fork and Pack rivers feed it, and it drains into the Pend Oreille River. The lake formed during the ice age at the south end of the Purcell Trench, carved by glaciers coming down from Canada. National forests of pine, fir, cedar and larch surround it, and most of the shoreline has no homes at all. Sandpoint is the largest town on the lake. Nearly all of the water is in Bonner County, while the southern tip in Kootenai County holds Farragut State Park, once a Navy training station in World War II, where the Navy still runs submarine acoustic research.