Epoxy
Flathead Lake
Montana, USA
Also known as Flathead, Salish Kootenai
Polson sits on the reason this lake is here. A glacier stalled at the south end and left behind the ridge of debris that still holds the water in.
Flathead is what remains of Glacial Lake Missoula, and the terminal moraine dropped at Polson works as its dam. Behind it sits the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi in the lower 48, roughly twenty eight miles long, fifteen across at its widest, and three hundred and seventy feet deep.
It is also extraordinarily clean. The entire lake flushes itself about every two years and two months. Lake Tahoe, which covers a similar area, takes six hundred and fifty.
The southern half of the water, including Big Arm, lies within the Flathead Reservation. The dam at Polson has been owned and operated by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes since 2015.
Details
- Feature
- Lake
- Build
- Epoxy
- Material
- Solid Maple
- Colour
- Caribbean Blue
- Size
- 10-1/2" x 16"
- Completed
- December 2024
How this one was made
The border runs close to the edge and in a different colour from the water, so the two are dammed and poured separately rather than in one pass. Maple is the other consideration. It is pale and open enough that blue will wick straight into the grain given any opportunity, so every exposed surface is sealed before resin goes anywhere near it, the walls inside the engraved channels included.
Marked on this piece
- Polson
- Big Arm
Waypoints close by
Christina LakeBoundary Country, British Columbia, Canada
Crawfish LakeRiverside, Washington, USA
Beaver LakeBritish Columbia, Canada
Hubbles LakeParkland County, Alberta, CanadaAlso from our workshop
Howl
From 
Kodiak
From 
Nomad
From 
Summit
From Where this is
47.8877, -114.1656