Lac La Belle is part of an embayment of Bete Grise Bay of Lake Superior, which has been separated from the bay by sandbars. Several extensive wetlands occupy depressions between the ridges and the shoreline near Keweenaw Bay at the northeastern end of the subsection. The Tobacco and Traverse Rivers meander across the flat sand plain. Gravelly sands and sandy loams. Soils of the uplands are typically well-drained, acidic, loamy sands and sandy loams derived largely from the underlying Jacobsville sandstone and shale.
Soils tend to be rockier in the north.
Soils on abandoned lake terraces are often rocky and poorly drained. On the sandy ground moraine of the eastern Keweenaw Peninsula, northern hardwoods covered most of the landscape. Sugar maple, basswood, and hophornbeam were the most common species. Poorly drained portions of the moraines were dominated by northern white-cedar, black spruce, and balsam fir. Cedar swamps ringed by thickets of speckled alder were common in narrow valleys between ridges.