Formed by meltwater after the end of the Wisconsin glaciation 20,000 years ago, Frame has been an important part of Yellowknife's history.

Later, when the city's New Town, now its downtown section, was surveyed and developed nearby, Frame offered accessible swimming and boating opportunities.

[4] Later development blocked the lake's only outflow, leaving it endorheic[Note 1] and complicating the problems caused by earlier pollution.

By the early 1970s it no longer supported any fish; within two decades residents had stopped swimming or boating it out of fear of leeches.

They have not, however, been able to determine whether that was due to climate change, pollution or some combination of both; the possibility exists that the lake has always been at a higher trophic state than others in the area.

Some city residents have agitated for efforts to reclaim the lake so it will once again be a destination for swimmers, anglers and boaters in warm weather.

Frame Lake is irregularly shaped, with a northern section and a southern section along a north-northeast to south-southwest axis approximately 1.4 kilometres (0.87 mi) long, connected by a narrower central passage midway along its length where a wide peninsula extends from the western shore and an arm extends roughly 500 metres (1,600 ft) to the east, curving northward.

[7] Surrounding terrain, as well as that of the islands, is primarily taiga forest, amid mostly bare outcrops of Canadian Shield bedrock typical of the Yellowknife area.

[2] On the eastern shore, near the southern end of the lake, is an overgrown sandy area called McNiven Beach,[6] after the city's first mayor.

[10] South of City Hall along the lake shore is Somba K'e Park, open space with the only totally developed portion of shoreline.

The Frame Lake Trail, a partially paved pathway 5.5 kilometres (3.4 mi) in length, closely follows the shoreline past an extensive area of forest.

[5] The lake took its name from Bill Frame, an early miner who owned part of the city's bus and taxi franchise.

[1] Yellowknife's growth was briefly interrupted by World War II, but when it resumed afterwards, the higher ground closer to the lake was chosen for expansion.

[16] Sewage dumped into nearby Niven Lake, heavily used for that purpose for almost 35 years of Yellowknife's postwar growth, may also have flowed into Frame, offering more nutrients.

In the winter, however, when the lake froze over and snow cover blocked much of the limited sunlight available,[Note 2] those same plants died off for lack of ability to photosynthesize.

Yellowknife built its current city hall by the lake edge in 1975, and the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, the territorial museum, followed nearby four years later.

A local journalist recalled in 2015 how he had had to watch his step to avoid deep, malodorous deposits while catching tadpoles in the shallow waters near his home at that time.

[4] The Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly moved into its new building, designed to preserve as much of the original shoreline and vegetation as possible,[20] on the north shore of the lake in 1993.

[5] In 2007, a conservation report prepared for the city named Frame Lake its top priority and suggested enacting special nature-preservation zoning to protect it.

[17] In 2013 another local resident organized a Canada Day cleanup and swim in the lake, saying concerns about arsenic and leeches in the water were exaggerated.

Small diabase dykes run through various portions of the bedrock, with the largest forming the elevated area at the lake's southeast corner.

Just south of Somba K'e Park on the east shore, the rock has striations and scour marks in the northeast-to-southwest direction of the glaciers' advance.

The researchers attributed Frame's high biochemical oxygen demand and "peculiar chemical characteristics" to not only the proximity of downtown but the city's use of the lake as a dump for plowed snow.

[18] Healey and Woodall were not able to analyze any sediments underneath more than one meter (3.3 ft) of water because the particles were too fine for the Ekman dredge sifter that they used.

[2] In 2013 Sarah Shenstone-Harris, a University of Toronto undergraduate interning at the school's Centre for Global Climate Science, was able to analyze the sediments.

If so, she also asked, when did that change occur, and was it possible to restore the lake to a level of water quality comparable to what it had been prior to the establishment of Yellowknife?

[27] Shenstone-Harris started from the observation that subarctic lakes generally had shown great sensitivity to climate change because of shifts in the amount of ice cover.

Those stresses could be exacerbated for subarctic lakes in an urban area facing higher levels of pollution from a number of different sources, such as Frame.

[27] Due to diatom dissolution at the lowest level of the sediments taken, Shenstone-Harris was unable to establish data for any years earlier than 1943, making it impossible to set the desired baseline for a pre-settlement Frame Lake.

However, the lack of data on ice cover since 1992 and her inability to determine the lake's status prior to the establishment of Yellowknife qualified that conclusion.