Lynn Canal
| Lynn Canal | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Connects waters | Chatham Strait , Icy Strait | |
| with water | Favorite Channel , Saginaw Channel (both on Stephens Passage ) | |
| Separates land mass | Mainland North America | |
| of land mass | Admiralty Island | |
| Data | ||
| Geographical location | 58 ° 37 ′ N , 135 ° 5 ′ W | |
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| length | 100 km | |
| Smallest width | 15 km | |
| Greatest depth | 600 m | |
| Islands | Sullivan Island | |
The Lynn Canal is a 100 kilometers long, 5 to 15 kilometers wide strait in the southeast of the US state Alaska .
The Lynn Canal is located in the Alexander Archipelago at the northern end of the Inside Passage and extends from the southern tip of the Chilkat Peninsula in the north, where it splits into Chilkat Inlet and Chilkoot Inlet to Chatham Strait and Icy Strait in the southwest. To the southeast, Favorite Channel and Saginaw Channel branch off to Stephens Passage . In the east is the side bay Berners Bay .
The bay was named by George Vancouver in 1794 after King's Lynn , his birthplace . With a depth of up to over 600 meters, the Lynn Canal is the deepest fjord in North America.
The Lynn Canal is a major waterway connecting Skagway and Haines to Juneau . During the gold rush on the Klondike River in the late 19th century, the canal was used by prospectors on the way to Skagway and Dyea , from where they could get inland via the White or Chilkoot Pass . After the gold rush and the commissioning of the White Pass and Yukon Railway , freight was transported south from the Yukon on the Lynn Canal. However, the freight volume declined in the 1980s with the throttling of mining activity. Today, most of the ferry traffic on the Canal is handled by the Alaska Marine Highway System .
Web links
- Maritime Heritage: Shipwrecks of Alaska's Lynn Canal on noaa.gov (Eng.)
- Lynn Canal in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey