Toe Lake

Toe Lake comes in at a B on the grading rubric — a respectable showing for a Minnesota lake of its size and depth.

A TSI value of 40 puts Toe Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. Toe Lake is unusually deep for Minnesota at 57 ft, which buffers the lake against summer warming and helps the deep water stay oxygenated. The lake's 169 acres and 2.8 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Toe Lake ranks 69 of 187 in St. Louis County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

Toe Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2022, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. The state fisheries records do not list documented species for Toe Lake, which usually reflects a lack of formal fisheries survey work rather than an empty lake. No formal public access is documented at Toe Lake — most use is by shoreline residents and their guests. 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.