Talk:Flathead Lake

---

INCORRECT: the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi is Iliamna Lake or Lake Iliamna (Yup'ik: in Alaska. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.149.70.18 (talk) 22:16, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Needs citations/sources

Everything after the introduction reads like either self research or plagiarized from a source that is not cited. Cartras (talk) 21:45, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

The second paragraph of the History section is taken directly from the following PNAS article. http://www.pnas.org/content/108/3/1070.full I suggest that, at the very least, it must be edited to credit the source. Personally, I think it should be rewritten. Cite Your Source (talk) 03:53, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the source referenced by the first article note: "About Flathead Head" - what? BLZebubba (talk) 14:09, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Flathead name

I read somewhere that the name of the Flathead lake came from the fact that it has a flat head, as in the head of the lake, being a filled in marsh, is amazingly flat. I don't remember what book this was in however (but it is in the Kalispell or Columbia Falls library). Jrincayc 03:42, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd always assumed it came from the Flathead Indians.

The lake is named for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation. The citation (Albert J. Partoll. "The Flathead-Salish Indian Name in Montana Nomenclature." The Montana Magazine of History Vol. 1, no. 1 (1951): pp. 37-47 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4515711) specifically describes the written history of the origin of the Flathead-Salish name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.19.7.91 (talk) 05:32, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

misinformation

Flathead Lake is not the largest natural freshwater lake in the western united states. That would be Lake Iliamna in Alaska, a natural lake that covers 1000 square miles and is 900 feet deep. I'm not sure that Flathead Lake is even in the top four. I know that Becharof and Lake Clark are also larger.

• Lake Tahoe is also larger, by a hair, according to the data on its page. BlongerBros 04:01, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Lake Tahoe is not larger than Flathead Lake; Flathead is almost 200 square miles and is almost 30 miles long. Flathead/Salish is the largest lake in the contiguous United States west of the Mississippi River.

Remove cleanup tag?

I feel that we could probably remove the cleanup tag from this article. It reads fairly well, and I didn't see any glaring errors in spelling, syntax or grammar. But, this is the first I've seen it, so I didn't want to be presumptious. CharacterZero | Speak 17:42, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I removed the cleanup tag (after adding an infobox). I don't know what the rationale was for a cleanup in the first place. Unless the reasons for cleanup are obvious (poor grammar, missing information, and so on), someone putting a cleanup tag on an article should explain why on the talk page. Otherwise, it makes it difficult for future editors to figure out what needs to be added or changed. --Elkman - ^(talk) 16:20, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Flathead Lake Monster

I reverted an edit that claimed there was rumors of a lake monster in Flathead Lake...well, it's probably good for tourism, but not much facuality to this aside from mentioning it's rumoured. I suppose we could put that back in, but we need to cite it and all I could find was this that was of much use.--MONGO 07:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Redundancy

The awkward wording "Flathead Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake" is tautological. A reservoir is not a lake because it is not natural. The Great Salt Lake is an inland sea, not a lake. And so, bodies of water like Fort Peck Reservoir and the 'lakes' on other dammed sections of the Missouri, Snake, Colorado, etc. rivers in the Western US are not true lakes, nor is the Great Salt 'Lake.' Flathead/Salish Lake is the largest lake in the western US, plain and simple. No need to qualify it as natural or freshwater, because the definition of a lake already includes these characteristics.

Even if you are correct, the word lake is commonly used for salty lakes and reservoirs, so this wording is needed to avoid confusion. And I'm not convinced you are correct. Sometimes the word "lake" is defined as you say, sometimes not. Wikipedia's lake page's first sentence says they can be fresh or salty. Since this page links to lake right in the sentence claiming it is the largest in the west it would be confusing to not specifically exclude salty lakes from the claim. And anyway, the distinction between natural vs. reservoir, and fresh vs. salty is not always clear cut. Kerr Dam raised Flathead Lake ten feet. How large was it before the dam? Was it smaller than Pyramid Lake (Nevada) (188 sq mi). And does Pyramid Lake, which is brackish, count as a freshwater "lake" or a salty "sea"? In short there is no single, strictly defined, universally accepted definition of "lake". Also, I changed the claim to say "west of the Mississippi" instead of "in the western United States", since the latter is vague and may or may not include larger lakes like Mille Lacs Lake. I don't know what to make of Red Lake (Minnesota), which is much larger than Flathead Lake (427 sq mi according to nationalatlas.gov [1]) and neither east nor west of the Mississippi (it is due north of the Mississippi's headwaters). Then there is the Lake of the Woods. Even if you only count the part of it that is in the United States it is still larger than Flathead Lake (the US portion is about 535 sq mi by my calculation). Pfly (talk) 06:40, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

A reservoir is not a lake. It's a reservoir. A salt lake is an inland sea, such as the Caspian SEA and Aral SEA, hence their names. The ancient Bonneville Sea (aka Bonneville 'lake' is the origin of the so-called Great Salt Lake, which is really an inland sea. We need to be using terminology routinely applied in geography and geology, not wishy washy. "largest natural freshwater lake" is grossly tautological. Flathead Lake is the largest lake west of the Mississippi River, both before and after the existence of Kerr Dam. Your (Pfly) arguments are invalid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.153.16.125 (talk) 19:23, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Nonetheless, "natural", used as lake terminology, means naturally occurring, or remaining in it's natural state - and not raised by a dam. We use dams to reserve additional water, hence "reservoir". The article also implies that only Polson Bay was raised 10 feet when the entire lake was raised 10 feet when it was made a reservoir (else there would be a 10-foot waterfall at the head of the bay). Tangverse (talk) 09:35, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Valley not formed by glacial damming!

The Flathead Valley was not formed by glacial damming nor by the glacial lake that once filled the Mission Valley. It existed before the lake formed (which is why the lake filled it). It does have geologic features that are the result of the lake such as lake sediments, moraines, and glacial erratics.

-- J. Wong (talk) 05:50, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

What About Its History of Strip Mining???

I seem to recall this having been one of the largest strip mine locations in Montana back in the day, too! Are we not discussing the big Open Pit Mining Era anywhere on Wikipedia? Because nobody told me. Yes, along with having also been timbered back in the 1950's and 1960's, they also had those huge Strip Mine diggers in this area, too, and have since restored as much of it as they've been known to do. Obviously you can see by the pic that they never actually restored all of the trees in the region. Just saying. The west side of the lake even appears to be simply filled in after they "Blasted" the actual mountain range that once lined the western shore there. Please include that awesome history in this article. . . it is very noticeably missing as all of the locals know, too! Thank-YouLesbrown99 (talk) 04:18, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

SIMILAR TO COALSTRIP, MONTANA-- Here is a link to the Coalstrip, Montana story where they built the Castle Rock Lake after striping out the dirt above the coal and then extracting the coal with the lake being the result: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colstrip,_Montana Says it was formerly named surge pond. This is how the present Flathead Lake was constructed, too, around the same period. Thank-You!!! Lesbrown99 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)