How Tall Is That?

The Bluffs surrounding the lake rise about 500 feet above the water. This is called “prominence”. Prominence is a measure of how tall a hill stands against the surrounding landscape. “Elevation,” tells us the distance (or how tall) something is above sea level.

Sauk Point which is the tallest point in Sauk County is located between Devil’s Lake & Parfrey’s Glen and has an elevation of 1593 ft. (486 m). However, the “prominence” is 621 feet above the surrounding landscape. Have you hiked the Sauk Point section of the Ice Age Trail?

The bluffs right around Devil’s Lake reach about 1450 feet in elevation, but as I said, they stand only about 500 feet above the lake itself. Prominence does a good job of telling us how tall things look to us. (Or how far up we’ll actually have to hike!)

So how tall is 500 feet?

Well, if the lake were frozen solid and you could stand the Statue of Liberty on the frozen lake, the bluffs would rise nearly two hundred feet above her torch. The Statue of Liberty is 305.10 feet tall.

The Golden Gate Bridge stands 745 feet above the water. That’s nearly 300 feet higher than the bluffs! That’s a big bridge! (Yeah, I’ve driven over it a few times!)

If we put Seattle’s 604 ft Space Needle on the “frozen” lake it would stand about 100 feet above the west bluff overlook.

China’s Spring Temple Buddha is about the same as the bluffs at 502 feet… Well, if you count the 200-foot base, it’s suddenly the same height as the space needle…

The Washington Monument is also about equal to the bluffs, at 555.410 feet tall.

Oh, and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil? Well, he is just 98 feet tall! But standing atop the 2,300-foot mountain ( Prominence: 791 feet.) he looks much taller!

BTW, if the lake wasn’t frozen and our landmarks had to sit on the bottom of the deepest part of the lake, you’d have to add (or subtract?) about 50 feet. I’ll let you do the math on that!!