White Bear Lake () is a

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

in northeastern Ramsey County and western Washington County in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

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 ...

, in the northeast part of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. The city of White Bear Lake takes its name from the lake.

History

In ''Life on the Mississippi'' (1883)'','' American author

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...

wrote:

The White-bear Lake is less known. It is a lovely sheet of water, and is being utilized as a summer resort by the wealth and fashion of the State. It has its club-house, and its hotel, with the modern improvements and conveniences; its fine summer residences; and plenty of fishing, hunting, and pleasant drives. There are a dozen minor summer resorts around about St. Paul and Minneapolis, but the White-bear Lake is the resort.

Twain also noted the Native American tradition of

maple sugar Maple sugar is a traditional sweetener in Canada and the Northeastern United States, prepared from the sap of the maple tree ("maple syrup, maple sap"). Sources Three species of maple trees in the genus ''Acer (plant), Acer'' are predomina ...

making on the island in White Bear Lake:

Every spring, for perhaps a century, or as long as there has been a nation of red men, an island in the middle of White-bear Lake has been visited by a band of Indians for the purpose of making maple sugar.

''The Legend of White Bear Lake''

In 1883, Mark Twain documented a version of ''The Legend of White Bear Lake'' which he ridiculed. In 2016 a musical, ''The Legend of White Bear Lake'', was produced by

Youth Music Theatre UK British Youth Music Theatre (BYMT), formerly Youth Music Theatre UK, is a UK-based national performing arts organisation founded in December 2003. BYMT provides music theatre training to young people aged 11–21 and a stepping stone to drama sc ...

and produced at the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth, England. Book music and lyrics were by Caroline Wigmore and Jennifer Green. The musical told the tale of the white bear after whom the lake is named.

Water level

The lake's surface elevation has fluctuated over time, with a recorded high of above

mean sea level A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

in June 1943, and a recorded low of in January 2013, with significant high and low periods throughout. In November 2012, the White Bear Lake Restoration Association and the White Bear Lake Homeowners Association filed a lawsuit against the

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, or Minnesota DNR, is the agency of the U.S. state of Minnesota charged with conserving and managing the state's natural resources. The agency maintains areas such as state parks, state forests, rec ...

, claiming that the DNR allowed overuse of groundwater resources around White Bear Lake, leading to a long-term decline in lake levels. The DNR is currently under court orders requiring it to limit issuing groundwater use permits within of the lake, and to identify further steps to manage groundwater use in the lake's watershed.

References

Lakes of Minnesota Lakes of Ramsey County, Minnesota Lakes of Washington County, Minnesota {{WashingtonCountyMN-geo-stub