In a country with an estimated 124,000 lakes, the United States is home to the third oldest lake in the world: Lake Tahoe.
And by default, the 191-square-mile body of water takes the cake as the oldest permanent freshwater lake in North America.
Lake Tahoe is at least 2.3 million years old, according to Winnie Kortemeier, a professor of geosciences who spoke about the ancient body of water at the Las Vegas Sun.
Kortemeier, a professor at Western Nevada College in Carson City, has been researching Lake Tahoe for nearly two decades.
Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California-Nevada border, has been revealed to be the oldest lake in North America, dating back at least 2.3 million years.
Winnie Kortemeier, a professor of geosciences at Western Nevada College in Carson City, Nevada, made the discovery after extensive research on Tahoe since 2005.
And as recently as Monday, he presented his creation of a planetary timeline, which used years of research and scientific data from other published research papers to compare Tahoe to other ancient lakes.
It was then that he shared his findings.
“It’s really hard to determine the age of a lake,” he told the Las Vegas Sun. “But in Tahoe, it’s pretty clear what its age is. It has to be more than 2.3 million years old.”
He began his research of Lake Tahoe by studying volcanic rocks in the Tahoe City area.
Determining the age of lakes is not a simple process, but he noted that Lake Tahoe is fortunate that the lava flow interacted with water, allowing the rocks to be dated.
Over the past 17 million years, Nevada has expanded to twice the width it began in, and the lake is the first basin of this formation, with the Sierra Nevada running along its western side and the Carson Range along its eastern shore.
Tahoe was created by faulting, which is a rare phenomenon and different from other lakes that were created by glaciers.
Skylandia Beach, Commons Beach, the cliffs above the city and even Eagle Rock on the West Coast are some of the places where he collected volcanic rocks.
He first made the discovery in 2012, after sending five rock samples to the U.S. Geological Survey’s geochronology laboratory for radiometric dating.
From there, he discovered that lava flows occurred in the Tahoe Basin at three distinct points in time: 2.3 million years ago, 2 million years ago, and 920,000 years ago.
As the lava erupted, it interacted with lake water and sediments—further evidence that Lake Tahoe existed at the time of the lava flows.
A common misconception is that Clear Lake is the oldest lake in North America, but Kortemeier’s findings debunk that claim.
Lake Tahoe is not only the oldest lake in the United States, but also ranks as the third oldest lake on Earth.
Lake Tahoe is also the second deepest lake in the United States at its deepest point, which is 1,645 feet.
His research on continuous lake sediments found in Clear Lake places it at 480,000 years old, significantly younger than Lake Tahoe.
But he was still shocked when his research revealed that Lake Tahoe was the third oldest lake on Earth.
“It’s number three in the world, because it’s really rare for a lake to form this way,” he added.
She placed Lake Baikal, a lake in Siberia, as the oldest existing lake in the world, at approximately 5 to 10.3 million years old.
The second oldest lake in the world, just before Tahoe, is Lake Tanganyika in East Africa, estimated to be between 8 and 10 million years old.
The investigation of both lakes arose from their continuous sedimentary sequence, which refers to the layers of rock.
Kortemeier placed Lake Baikal, a lake in Siberia, as the oldest lake in the world, dating between 5 and 10.3 million years.
Like Tahoe, Lake Baikal was also formed by faulting.
All three lakes, Baikal, Tanganyika and Tahoe, were created by faults, Kortemeier added, which is a rare phenomenon and distinct from other lakes that were created by glaciers.
Baikal, Tanganyika and Tahoe are fault-formed lakes that have similar characteristics to each other: long and narrow.
Lake Tahoe itself is 22 miles long and 12 miles wide.
Tahoe’s deepest area is 1,645 feet deep, making it the second deepest lake in the United States, after Oregon’s Crater Lake, according to Keep Tahoe Blue.
“The oldest lakes on Earth are typically in active fault basins, where the basin is still in the process of faulting and forming,” Kortemeier added.
“So even if you add sediment all the time, the bottom keeps sinking… and so the basins keep getting deeper over time. And that’s why you get these very old, very old lakes.”
The Tahoe Basin also has several faults running beneath it, which contribute to the west side of the lake being deeper than the east side.
Over time, it was basically torn apart by the movement of the Earth.
“Nevada, over the last 17 million years, has stretched to twice its initial width,” Kortemeier said. “As that happens, the basins sink. As the area stretches more and more, the basins sink along faults and then the crust thins and the mountains rise because of the entire Great Basin.”
Kortemeier’s research places Lake Tanganyika in East Africa as the second oldest lake in the world, with an estimated age of between 8 and 10 million years.
Like Baikal and Tahoe, Lake Tanganyika was formed by faults that were studied using its continuous sedimentary sequence, which refers to the layers of rock.
And because Tahoe has experienced volcanic activity for the last million years, it is considered dormant, not extinct or dead.
Tahoe is also one of the purest bodies of water in the world, with 99.994 percent pure water, according to The Tahoe landing.
And because it is the second deepest lake in the United States, the amount of water in the lake is enough to supply every person in the U.S. with 50 gallons of water per day for five years.
If you could take all the water from Tahoe and pour it into an area the size of California, the water would still be 14 inches deep.
Approximately eight million people live within a half-day drive of the Tahoe Basin, Keep Tahoe Blue reported.
Comprised of 12 ski resorts and beautiful views that have served as locations for popular films over the years, Lake Tahoe is a landmark in the country.
And now, it is the grandfather of American lakes.
