Little Newton Lake

Little Newton Lake sits at the top of the Wisconsin DNR grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Wisconsin. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

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. Little Newton 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 is compact at 59 acres, with partial shoreline records and little volume to buffer nutrient inputs. Little Newton Lake sits at rank 12 of 22 in Marinette County, in the lower half of the local distribution.

Eurasian watermilfoil has been documented at Little Newton Lake, requiring shoreline management to keep dense mats from crowding native vegetation. Walleye are documented at Little Newton 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.