Bay Lake is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Bay Lake Township,

Crow Wing County Crow Wing County is a county in the East Central part of the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 66,123. Its county seat is Brainerd. The county was formed in 1857, and was organized in 1870. Crow Wing County i ...

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

, United States, near Deerwood. It is along State Highway 6 ( MN 6) near the junction with Crow Wing County Road 14.

History

Settling in the area begun in the 1870s, when a railroad began to be built from

Duluth Duluth ( ) is a Port, port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County, Minnesota, St. Louis County. Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, the city is a hub for cargo shipping. The population ...

to the West Coast, despite the area being known prior to this date by some early trappers and fur traders. The settlers that did arrive in the area, despite the lack of infrastructures, mostly migrated due to the promises of the "

Homestead Act of 1862 The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than of public land, or nearly 10 percent of t ...

" and its benefits. A worker known as Robert Achibald was the first Withington settler. The town after its funding led to the development of the Sessabegamah Trail which reached as far south as to Bay Lake. There, in 1881, Robert Achibald’s brother, David Archibald, settled. In the late 1890s, Joseph and Josephine Ruttger, homesteaders on Bay Lake, began providing boats, sleeping accommodations, and meals to anglers who arrived at the Deerwood train station. As their reputation spread, the Ruttgers and their four sons embraced the tourism industry; by the 1930s the family operated five Minnesota resorts and as of 2020, Ruttger’s Bay Lake Lodge is the oldest Minnesota resort operated by its founding family.

References

Unincorporated communities in Crow Wing County, Minnesota Unincorporated communities in Minnesota {{CrowWingCountyMN-geo-stub