by WisCartography

Lake Winnebago

About this Map

This map features Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin’s largest inland lake, stretching roughly 30 miles from north to south and about 10 miles across at its widest point. It shows the lake in detail along with the surrounding landscape and communities, from Fond du Lac north through Oshkosh, Neenah, Menasha, and Appleton.

Lake Winnebago was the 50th lake map I created, so I decided to go big with it. Despite its enormous size, the lake is relatively shallow, reaching a maximum depth of only about 21 feet. Because of those unusual dimensions, I took a somewhat different approach to mapping it. While maintaining the vintage style of my lake map series, I gave this map more of a nautical-chart character, using depth soundings and contours to portray the lake bottom in detail.

I spent weeks gathering, comparing, and compiling information for this map. In addition to lake depths, it includes named reefs, islands, shoreline features, roads, communities, and surrounding landmarks, as well as a latitude-longitude reference grid. Illustrations highlight many of the fish species found in Lake Winnebago, including Walleye, Northern Pike, Muskellunge, Lake Sturgeon, bass, panfish, catfish, and others.

Bringing that amount of information together on a single map was one of the challenges of the project and one of the reasons Lake Winnebago became a particularly ambitious addition to the series. The finished map is designed for people who enjoy studying the details, but also to work as an attractive piece of wall art. More than simply a depth map, it places Lake Winnebago within the broader landscape and communities that surround it and captures the scale and distinctive character of one of Wisconsin’s great lakes.