It has a surface area of 873.3 km2 (337.2 sq mi), a mean elevation of 196 m (643 ft) above sea level, and is located between the Ottawa River and Georgian Bay.

Jean Nicolet, another French trader and explorer had a "cabin and trading-house" for eight or nine years living among the Indigenous people on the shores of Lake Nipissing until 1633 when he was recalled to Quebec to become Commissary and Indian Interpreter for the "Company of the Hundred Associates."

During the American Revolutionary War, Lake Nipissing was proposed as the boundary in the instructions of the Continental Congress to John Adams, the Commissioner appointed to negotiate a treaty of peace with Great Britain.

[4] The first permanent European settlement on the lake dates from around 1874 with a trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company on the northwest corner in what is now Sturgeon Falls.

In the days of fur trade, coureur des bois and later voyageurs travelled through the lake by canoe via the Mattawa and French rivers.

Lake Nipissing lies in the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben, a Mesozoic era rift valley that formed 175 million years ago.

The lake is home to an abundance of flora and fauna: white pine is significant, however, broadleaf trees such as aspen, ash, birch, maple and oak predominate some of the larger islands.