LAKE WINNEBAGO

The largest lake in Wisconsin covers 215 square miles, is 30 miles long and 10 miles wide, and has an average depth of just 15.5 feet. Its Algonquin neighbors called the local Ho-Chunk native tribe “winnebago,” which meant “people of the filthy water,” because the area had a strong fish odor. Really just a wide spot in the Fox River, what is now the lake was a wild-rice marsh before Europeans constructed a series of dams for lumber mills between Menasha and Green Bay. The city of Fond du Lac (French for “bottom of the lake”) is the home of Mercury Marine, and in the 1950s and ’60s the lake hosted annual powerboat endurance races.