What’s Missouri’s Largest Lake? It’s NOT Lake of the Ozarks

I asked a question that I thought I knew the answer to. Boy, was I wrong. What do you think is Missouri's largest lake? If you immediately think it has to be Lake of the Ozarks, you're as wrong as I was.

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It's no secret that Missouri does not lack great water areas. If you love lakes, there's a lot to like in Missouri. The Show Me State also has numerous mammoth lakes, too. Missouri Life has some backstory on almost all of them.

Let's rundown the Missouri lakes that aren't the largest. I've already mentioned it's not Lake of the Ozarks. What about Table Rock Lake? Nope, not that one either although it is the deepest at 220 feet. It's does have a surface area over 43,000 acres, but that's not #1.

Mark Twain Lake is large, too, with a surface area of over 18,000 acres, but that's less than 1/3rd of Missouri's largest.

What is Missouri's Largest Lake?

While Lake of the Ozarks does have a surface area of 55,000 acres, it barely misses the top spot as Missouri's largest lake. That honor goes to Truman Lake with a surface area of 55,406 acres.

Missouri Life shares one more interesting factoid about Truman Lake which I never knew. It was the site of a large meteor impact.

The southwest portion of the lake is part of the Weaubleau structure, a 19-mile-wide crater probably made by a meteoroid about 330 million years ago. The crater is one of the 50 largest known impact craters on earth and the fourth-largest in the country.

I'm glad none of us were around for that event.

Next time you want to stump someone with Missouri trivia, ask them what Missouri's largest lake is and see if they are as surprised with the truth as I was.