Beauty Lake

The LakeGrade rubric puts Beauty Lake at a C: clarity at 7.0 ft, phosphorus readings still being added, and a TSI of 49 signal an intermediate trophic state. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

The lake sits in the mesotrophic zone — the band where most well-managed Minnesota lakes fall. The lake bottoms out at 27 ft — a moderate depth that supports a warm-water fishery without the year-round cold refuge a deeper basin provides. The lake's 240 acres and 3.5 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Within Todd County's 17 graded lakes, Beauty Lake ranks 12 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

Beauty Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The fishery includes walleye alongside the lake's other 15 documented species — a notable draw for Minnesota anglers. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. Monitoring depth is thin here: the LakeGrade rubric is applied to a small number of sample years, and the grade will be revised as more data accumulates.