Lake Superior the Soo Locks. Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world in area (if Lakes Michigan and Huron are taken separately; "see Lake Michigan–Huron"), and the third largest in volume, behind Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. The Caspian Sea, while larger than Lake Superior in both surface area and volume, is brackish; though presently isolated, prehistorically the Caspian has been repeatedly connected to and isolated from the Mediterranean via the Black Sea. Lake Superior has a surface area of , which is approximately the size of South Carolina or Austria. It has a
Lake Michigan Michigan is the sole Great Lake wholly within the borders of the United States; the others are shared with Canada. It lies in the region known as the American Midwest. Lake Michigan has a surface area of 22,404 sq.mi (58,026 km); (13,237 square miles, 34,284 km lying in Michigan state, 7,358 square miles, 19,056 km in Wisconsin, 234 square miles, 606 km in Indiana, & 1,576 square miles, 4,079 km in Illinois) making it the largest lake entirely within one country by surface area (Lake Baikal, in Russia, is larger by water volume), and the fifth-largest lake in the world.