Sturgeon Lake, Minnesota

Sturgeon Lake is a small city in Pine County named straightforwardly for the lake beside it, and the lake was named for the large sturgeon that once ran through these waters. Pine County itself was organized in eighteen fifty-six from Chisago and Ramsey counties and named for the vast stands of white and red pine that blanketed the region. The village of Sturgeon Lake incorporated on August second, eighteen eighty-nine, when lumber camps and sawmill towns were still driving Pine County's economy. The old-growth pine is long gone, but the lake remains, and the community of a few hundred people holds on as a quiet stop between Duluth and the Twin Cities.