Despite years of environmental damage caused by heavy industries, transportation infrastructure, urban runoff and filling of wetlands, it is one of the most important biological sites in the Chicago region.

The western impoundments are now part of the William W. Powers State Recreation Area and are drained by Indian Creek to the Calumet River.

The longest dike, running roughly parallel to State Line Road and traversing the entire length of the lake, contains railroad tracks belonging to the Indiana Harbor Belt.

Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad has an active spur line that runs through the Illinois side of the lake in the Hegewisch community area.

[7] During the Cold War, two areas around the lake were used to create Nike missile site C-44, part of an air defense system for Chicago and its heavy industries.

On the northwest side of the lake, several hundred acres of wetlands were filled with ferrous slag in order to create the actual site for the missiles.

The southwest side of the lake housed the site's radar station and has been converted into the William W. Powers State Recreation Area in Illinois.

On August 23, 2002, more than 150 experts in botany, zoology and related ecological fields assembled at Wolf Lake and in the surrounding forest, prairie and marshland to identify and record as many living organisms as possible within a single 24-hour period.

The purpose of this undertaking, known as the Calumet Bioblitz, was to document the extraordinary biodiversity of green pockets that have survived within the urban and industrial landscape south of Chicago.

The water in Wolf Lake was about 18 inches higher until 1998 when the Illinois Department of Natural Resources removed several beavers and their dams that had been built across Indian Creek.

[8] A $7.25 million ecosystem restoration project for Wolf Lake was carried out by the Chicago District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with the support of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the City of Hammond.