Druid Lake

Druid Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. The lake's weakest score is on Secchi depth — the water looks more turbid than its phosphorus number alone would predict.

A TSI in the eutrophic range signals a lake doing what nutrient-loaded waters do — supporting an active algal community at the cost of clear water. Druid Lake is unusually deep for Wisconsin at 53 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. The lake's 122 acres and partial shoreline records put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Druid Lake ranks 12 of 15 in Washington County — at the lower end of the locally monitored distribution.

Eurasian watermilfoil has been documented at Druid Lake, requiring shoreline management to keep dense mats from crowding native vegetation. Walleye are documented at Druid Lake, one of 4 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Wisconsin DNR 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.