Strawberry Lake is a natural high-elevation body of water in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness in the U.S. state of Oregon. Located about 10mi south of Prairie City in Grant County, the shallow lake covers about 36acres surrounded by forest. Recreational activities in the lake basin include hiking, backpacking, skiing, and fishing.Geology and geographyStratovolcanoes erupting about 14.7 million years ago in the Miocene covered about 500mi2 of what later became Grant County with andesite lavas and mudflows. The Strawberry Mountains are eroded remnants of the mountains created by those volcanoes and by intrusions of igneous rock.Strawberry Lake is the largest of the small glacial lakes found in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness. The surface of the lake is more than 6000ft above sea level. Occupying part of a valley carved by ice in the Pleistocene, the lake formed behind a landslide dam across Strawberry Creek. Water from the lake does not flow over the dam except in high water but seeps through the landslide to re-form the creek several hundred yards (meters) downstream. Strawberry Lake has an average depth of 9ft and a maximum depth of 27ft. The length of its shoreline is about 1.2mi. Despite water-quality problems stemming from recreational activity in the lake's drainage basin, the water remains transparent enough that the lake bottom is visible from the surface even at the lake's deepest point.
