Ester Lake

Ester Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota.

The lake's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. Ester Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 110 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. The lake's 374 acres and 8.3 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Ester Lake ranks 17 of 142 in Lake County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

Ester Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2023, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The fishery is bass-led, with 8 documented species across the lake's records. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. 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.