Widow Lake

Widow Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. Clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a all rate similarly, so there is no obvious single lever to pull on watershed management.

A TSI value of 35 puts Widow Lake in the oligotrophic range, where biological productivity stays low and the water column remains clear. A maximum depth of 46 ft puts Widow Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. The lake's 198 acres and 3.0 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Widow Lake ranks 27 of 133 in Cass County, putting it in the upper tier of locally monitored lakes.

Widow Lake has no invasive species recorded in Minnesota state databases as of 2024, though prevention practices still apply at all access points. Walleye are documented at Widow Lake, one of 12 fish species on record for the lake. A documented public access point at Widow Lake makes the lake usable for shore fishing, paddle craft, and trailered boats. 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.