Talk:List of lakes of Minnesota

Criteria for listing?
Should there be a limit on the size of the lake? Should there have to be an article? I am thinking that if the lake has an article or is greater than X acres it should be listed. What X is I do not know. The Minnesoata DNR lakefinder gives all sorts of fun facts... -Ravedave 03:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * When you say a "limit on the size of the lake" I assume you mean the minumum size allowable. I think that any lake with a wiki article is fair game and any lake without an article should be removed until it has one.  Otherwise we could have a list of 12,543 lakes with only 100 blue links.  Let's start removing red links by the end of the weekend if no one objects.--Hraefen 15:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If the criteria is to only list lakes with wiki articles why even have this page? It would just duplicate Category:Lakes_of_Minnesota, thats why I was thinking maybe we should make it all lakes greater than X or wiki article. What do you think? -Ravedave 17:40, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * It's true that this list would be the same as Category:Lakes of Minnesota if all red links were removed, but I think maintaing a list as well has three advantages. 1. Many users don't really know about the category function, or at least they're not as likely to use them as they are a list 2. you con't link to a category within the body of a text, it always just appears at the bottom 3.  If a vandal removed some lakes from a list (vandals do weird things sometimes) we would know of it right away...we may not necessariuly catch this if a lake was removed from a cateogry ... we would only see it if that particular lake was on our watchlist.  I think we should avoid setting a lake size minimum if this list gets crazy long, and I don't think it is (yet) and removing red links will prolong this.--Hraefen 17:55, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * hrm, I'll think on it. I think items like 'long lake' should be removed for sure. Interesting article in regards to minnesota lakes - . -Ravedave

What about multiple lakes sharing identical names? For example Rice Lake: now which Rice Lake are we speaking of? One in Wisconsin or the one in Minnesota, and (since we are speaking of List of Lakes in Minnesota) which one in Minnesota? By having a simple Rice Lake would not work, neither would Rice Lake (Minnesota) nor Rice Lake (Crow Wing County, Minnesota). Using Minnesota DNR Lake ID won't quite work well either because, first, some large lakes are divided into smaller segments so some lakes may have several Lake IDs, and secondly, in everyday life, the general public don't call a lake by its lake ID number. Any suggestions? I would suggest something like Rice Lake (by Hesitation WMA, Crow Wing County, MN), but this could be quite cumbersome for list makers and article writers. CJLippert 20:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I think adding the county behind recurring lake names (as a description here, not even necessarily in the wiki name) would suffice except in rare cases. If there does need to be more than one article for lakes that share the same name, then presumably we can worry about disambig methods on a case by case basis.--Our Bold Hero 21:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Another lake-name that occurs frequently is "Mud Lake" to which I see there is a disabmiguation page associated with it. I have added bunch of Rice Lakes in the "List of lakes in Minnesota" page -- commented them out, though -- and bunch of Mud Lakes in the disambiguation page -- also commented them out.  Would having a disambiguation page for Rice Lake be the way to go as to not to over-clutter the List page? CJLippert 13:19, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

What is the # column for? I was originally assuming it was for the rank in size of the lake (so Lake Superior would be #1, for example). Now I'm wondering if the original intent of the column was to list how many MN lakes share that name. I was also assuming that when two counties showed up in the counties column, it was a lake that was half in one county and half in another (which is common) but now I'm guessing it's for listing multiple lakes in a single row if they share a name. If this is true, then what do we do where there are multiple lakes in the same country with the same name? For instance, there are (at least) 2 lakes called Diamond Lake in Hennepin County, and (at least) 2 lakes called Bass Lake in Hennepin County. If there are two lakes called foo (one in county X, and one split between counties Y and Z) would it be confusing to list "2" in the # column and then "X, Y, Z" in the counties column? Hack-Man 13:51, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, and another reason I see to not list multiple lakes in a single row: what should go in the area column? The combined area of all the lakes with the same name?  Or should each of the areas be listed, separated by commas?  This would mean careful attention would have to be taken to keep the order of teh areas the same as the order of the counties.  I think serious consideration should be taken to having a separate row for each lake. Hack-Man 13:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I would like to add a lake but I am having trouble figuring out just what the page name would be. I would like to make a page for Wood Lake in Yellow Medicine County, MN. But a problem is that there is a town named Wood Lake, also in Yellow Medicine County, near there. Of course there are also many other lakes with the same name. If someone could help sort this out I'd be happy to add content to the Wood Lake article.Andercee 09:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think I figured it out.Andercee 09:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Just Saying
I did the math and figured this out, less than 2% of Minnesota's Lakes are accounted for in this list.Andercee 09:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The sort tool doesn't work right, when I try to sort from biggest to smallest, a 9 acre lake comes before a 1000 acre lake, since "9" is bigger than "1"


 * I fixed this Alexkorn (talk) 07:40, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone know where I can find a list of the 10 or 100 or 1000 biggest lakes in Minnesota? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.20.66.109 (talk) 16:19, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

This is a good start

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/faq/mnfacts/water.html

Ten largest lakes (entire lake within borders of Minnesota): Red Lake (both "Upper" and "Lower") - 288,800 acres Mille Lacs Lake - 132,516 acres Leech Lake - 111,527 acres Lake Winnibigoshish - 58,544 acres Lake Vermilion - 40,557 acres Lake Kabetogama - 25,760 acres Mud Lake (Marshall County) - 23,700 acres Cass Lake - 15,596 Lake Minnetonka - 14,004 acres Otter Tail Lake - 13,725 acres —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.20.66.109 (talk) 16:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Wisconsin lakes
I undid the revision about Wisconsin having more lakes, as the Wisconsin DNR and Minnesota DNR figures are counting lakes of different sizes. According to the figures at General Facts about Wisconsin Lakes, Wisconsin has 15,057 documented lakes, 60 percent of which (9,034) are unnamed. The majority of those (at least 4,517) are less than 10 acres. So Minnesota has 11,842 10-acre lakes and Wisconsin has at most 10,540. I can't find a figure for total Minnesota lakes, however, and that should probably be added to this article to account for varying definitions.

Major overhaul
I just completed a major overhaul to the list, getting nearly all my information from www.lakehomes.com. One thing I tweaked was some of the name modifiers. For example, since Big Pine had what appeared to be a corresponding Little Pine, I grouped them together as Pine (Big) and Pine (Little). However, there was another Big Pine that was all by itself, so I left it alone. This happened a few other times with Big/Little, and Upper/Lower lakes. Feel free to change it if my tweaking made it more confusing. I also didn't link any counties or towns because this list focuses on the lakes and the first entity could change depending on how a user sorts the list. Oh, and I only wikilinked to exact lake articles, not dab pages or city/county pages. Hoof Hearted 16:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Lake Names with "Lake" in the name
Should "Lake Phalen" be listed as "Lake Phalen", or just "Phalen"?JP (talk) 04:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Add elevation data to table
It would be interesting to add a column to the table listing the lake's average (or typical) height about sea level, and perhaps how the level is controlled; for example, dam (e.g., as maintained by US Army Corp of Engineers) or just nature. Could also list record high and low levels, if known. Dan Aquinas (talk) 20:03, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Fillmore County
I'm not sure if I'm right about this, but when you said only four counties don't have lakes, I think you should research Fillmore County because I've lived there all my life and I don't think we have a lake. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.121.193.24 (talk) 20:02, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Lake Seymour?
Lake Seymour is listed, the deepest lake within the state. But there is no Farris County, and no town of Michael. Is Seymour a real lake? 74.192.58.248 (talk) 04:17, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Just eliminated this. Funfb (talk) 14:11, 3 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Must have been a hoax edit. North8000 (talk) 14:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Don't know about a hoax edit, Farris County, town of Michael, or "deepest lake" but the USGS does list a Lake Seymour, in Martin County, Minnesota. Lake Seymour is on the USGS Sherburn map. They show it at 434221N, 0944208W or 43.7059199, -94.7021121. They put the elevation at 364 meters or 1194 feet. It was entered into the USGS Geographic Names Information System database on 01/11/1980, and updated on 06/22/2011. This is exactly how the USGS GNIS has it listed: 651881 | Lake Seymour | Lake | MN | 27 | Martin | 091 | 434221N | 0944208W | 43.7059199 | -94.7021121 ||||| 364 | 1194 | Sherburn | 01/11/1980 | 06/22/2011 Biographylibrary (talk) 21:14, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

unnamed lakes
I propose that the unnamed lakes be removed from the list. The vast majority are from Stearns County, so this has got to be an artifact of some database that had entries for no-account unnamed lakes for that county. Thus, there's an uneven distribution by county of unnamed lakes. Also, most of the unnamed lakes are quite small. The smallest, in fact, is about six feet wide and two feet deep. I've seen potholes that approach that. Jbening (talk) 22:39, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Chiming in because I watch/edit the page, but I honestly don't mind much either way. I'm mostly here for the IP that keeps adding giant piles of data without bothering to keep the formatting consistent. :) NekoKatsun (talk) 22:54, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Number of lakes in Minnesota
and. In May 2016 an editor changed the number of lakes in Minnesota from 11,842 (cited to a Minnesota state source) to 15,291 (cited to an article about shipwrecks on the Minnesota Historical Society site which was posted in 2015). The larger number is a mistaken interpretation of a state survey of lakes, which states that Minnesota has 15,291 lake basins. Of those lake basins, 3,257 are dry, and even in Minnesota not considered to be lakes. However, other sites have picked up the larger number, possibly because it was online in this article from May to November, when I corrected it. There is even a T-shirt for sale with the larger number. However, reliable references do not support the larger number. StarryGrandma (talk) 06:03, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I just did one edit in that area which was undoing Nejones1987's edit. My scope was very narrow....per the edit summary "Undo substitution of sourced material with unsourced material. Undo removal of references. Please take it to talk if this is real."
 * You clearly have more expertise and have done more research in this area than me. Please keep, change or fix in any way that you see fit. Sincerely  North8000  (talk) 13:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC)Edited  North8000  (talk) 13:52, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion
I saw this discussion up the page but it was years ago and no consensus seemed to have arisen.

There's over two dozen listings here at less than one acre in size (mostly from Stearns County), and they appear for all the world to be an assortment of small ponds and man-made pits, with a few sloughs mixed in. I've looked into several of them and can't find any references to such bodies of water outside of this list (which raises questions as to where the size and depth data came from, but I digress). I recently removed an entry which appeared to be merely a ditch.

In the absence of any formal definition that separates lakes from ponds, is there any criteria we could apply to this list that would stand? As it is, there's nothing stopping it from including thousands of un-noteworthy holding ponds with no official names.

I'd hesitate to apply some arbitrary number, but at the same time, simple logic disqualifies a number of these. The DNR's only criterion is a "wave-swept shore" which is neither quantifiable nor sourceable. I grew up near a 1/3-acre pond and I'd certainly never call that a lake, but... where's the line? Even the DNR's LakeFinder includes things named "... Pond" although many have no further details on them.

Would it be reasonable to apply a criterion of 1 acre and above to start, and see how that works? That cutoff certainly wouldn't be too high, in my view, so the risk of eliminating pertinent information is minimal.

--Olds 403 (talk) 00:57, 21 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I think that that would be a good idea. Probably should be more like 5 acres but 1 acre makes it a really safe start. North8000 (talk) 02:32, 21 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The only possible issue I've been able to think of is that setting it loosely could make it more difficult to tighten it later, but that's probably unlikely. I'll post this at the Minnesota WikiProject for additional input. --Olds 403 (talk) 16:26, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest just wp:bold and try it. I'll do one to break the ice.North8000 (talk) 20:01, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I did one, I removed "Unnamed slough 1" 1/10th Acre is not a lake. If round it would be 37 feet across, if any other shape, less. North8000 (talk) 20:10, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It turns out that the vast majority of these smaller bodies of water can't be found listed by the DNR, USGS, or PCA, and search engines turn up nothing as well. I removed a fair chunk of them and will look into the rest eventually as well. Just cleaning out the glut of them from Stearns and Wright counties eliminated all but two of the sub-1-acre entries anyway so I think we're in the clear for applying a 1-acre-plus limit. --Olds 403 (talk) 20:56, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Cool / nice work! North8000 (talk) 01:17, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Generally on Wikipedia a "List of" should be read as having the word "notable" implied in the title. If there aren't sources about it, other than a passing mention in an atlas, there's not likely to ever be an article about it and it shouldn't be in the list. Jonathunder (talk) 21:13, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that there should be some criteria, but wp:notability is a requirement for existence of a separate article, not for inclusion on a list. North8000 (talk) 11:17, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Measurement precision
There's some inconsistency in the number of decimal places the data is reported to, mostly for acreage. The U of M water clarity information gives the size to the whole number, the DNR lists it to two decimal places, while the PCA gives ten. Most lakes here are listed to the whole number.

Considering the natural fluctuations in size, depth, and clarity, and the inherent lack of precision in physically measuring a lake anyway, I propose reporting all figures to the whole number here, unless the number is less than 1. --Olds 403 (talk) 16:36, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * There are some pretty absurd ones in there. One has 11 decimal places in there, where adding a teaspoon of water would change that number, and where even evaporation would keep the last several digits spinning continuously.  In that case, it presumes knowing/defining the position of the shoreline within 2 billionths of an inch. (+/- .000000002")! But knocking very small lakes down to zero decimal places would introduce significant proportionate rounding errors, and be removing known (presumably sourced) info.  Maybe just limit all lakes to 2 decimal places? I don't consider standardization to be important, but IMO removing silly stuff is a good idea.  North8000 (talk) 19:58, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Attribution
Text and references copied from The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and List of lakes in Minnesota to Bachelor Lake (Brown County, Minnesota), See former article's history for a list of contributors. 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 15:09, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Text and references copied from Bachelor Lake (Brown County, Minnesota) to The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and List of lakes in Minnesota. See former article's history for a list of contributors. <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 15:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)