Photo #12194 - Yellowstone Lake Sitting in the bowl of a 650,000 year old volcanic caldera, Yellowstone Lake is a wild and mysterious phenomena. The lake covers 136 square miles, one of the largest freshwater lakes at such a high altitude in the world. It has 110 miles of shoreline and depths up to 400 feet. Evidence shows that this massive lake once drained south into the Snake River. It is populated with cutthroat trout, a species found west of the continental divide, and connected to rivers that flow into the Pacific. At some point, after Yellowstone Lake was populated with cutthroat, the lake 'tipped' with the north bank becoming lower than the south bank, spilling it into what became the Yellowstone River. The very mention of the the word Wyoming evokes the essence of the American West. Wyoming is all that innumerable movies, novels and legends have tried to capture. This Western Spirit thrives to this day in the Cowboy State. The name Wyoming has its origins in an Algonquin word meaning \"large prairie place \".