White Elephant Lake is located 500 metres west of the BC Rail line, five kilometres northeast of 70 Mile House.

The lake is a semi-evaporitic playa lake. It is located in the "Green Timber Plateau" area (EMPR Bulletin 4), a semi-arid plateau area averaging 1130 metres elevation which is part of the Cariboo Plateau and host to several playa lakes. The area is underlain by alkaline plateau basalt flows of the Miocene to Pleistocene Chilcotin Group, mantled by a thin cover of glacial till and glaciofluvial sediments. Annual precipitation averages between 300 and 400 millimetres (EMPR Paper 1991-1).

White Elephant Lake contains sodium carbonate-rich brine and "winter crystal" (natron or hydrated sodium carbonate). It covers an area of approximately 6 hectares and is covered with brine to an average depth of approximately 50 centimetres. At the end of the dry season in 1937 (EMPR Bulletin 4) the muddy shoreline was heavily encrusted with natron. The brine had a density of 1.083 and contained 8.3 per cent dissolved solids composed of 97.5 per cent sodium carbonate, 2.1 per cent sodium chloride and 0.4 per cent sodium sulphate. "Winter Crystal" has been harvested and shipped early in the last century. Canadian Occidental Petroleum staked the Soda 12 and 13 claims in 1989, collected a water, a mud and a winter crystal sample and completed analyses for sodium carbonate and other alkalai salts (Assessment Report 20080). They also completed an airborne infrared survey.