Minnesota is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”. But during a 2019 radio interview, Wisconsin Secretary of Tourism Sara Meaney claimed that Wisconsin actually had 15,000 lakes.
“More than Minnesota,” she said. “We win.”
It turns out, Minnesota and Wisconsin define lakes and ponds quite differently. In Wisconsin, any body of water 2.2 acres and above is considered a lake, while Minnesota only considers it a lake if it’s 10 acres or more. The reason these states have such different takes on this is because there is no universal definition for lakes and ponds anywhere in the world.
But beyond rivalries and bragging rights, does it really matter that a universal standard doesn’t exist? And who really wins this border battle?
Credits:
Host / Producer: Dan Wanschura
Editor: Morgan Springer
Additional Editing: Ellie Katz, Claire Keenan-Kurgan
Special Thanks: Meredith Holgerson, Cory McDonald, Jen Sorenson, Michael Spaulding and WTMJ radio
Also, thanks to hobby limnologist and educator Geo Rutherford, who helped with this episode. Be sure to check out her book titled, “Spooky Lakes: 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes that Dot Our Planet”
Transcript:
DAN WANSCHURA, BYLINE: This is Points North. A podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. I’m Dan Wanschura.For those keeping score at home, I’m from Minnesota. So, I can tell you firsthand that out of all the states, Minnesotans hate Wisconsin the most. I speak mostly in friendly hyperbole when I say that. After all, Minnesotans are known for being really nice, right? Yeah, that’s mostly true.
But as far as state rivalries are concerned, we are taught at an early age to cultivate great disdain for our neighbors to the east. And those feelings are reciprocated. Case in point, when sports teams from the two states play each other, the matchup is straight-up described in terms of war.
TV AD: Monday, it’s an NFC North Border Battle, as the Vikings take on the Packers…
WANSCHURA: The Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers have one of the most intense rivalries in the country. These football games can even get a little crude. Like in 2004, when the Vikings knocked the Packers out of the playoffs.
NFL ANNOUNCER: Moss – Randy Moss is in for a touchdown.
WANSCHURA: After he scored, Randy Moss pretended to moon the Packers fans.
NFL ANNOUNCER: That is a disgusting act by Randy Moss. And it’s unfortunate that we had that on our air live. That is disgusting by Randy Moss.
WANSCHURA: The announcer wasn’t a fan of the celebration but a 15 year-old Dan Wanschura was. The Minnesota – Wisconsin rivalry extends into the college football ranks, too. The Golden Gophers and Badgers have beaten each other the same number of times since they started playing. Every year, the winner gets a trophy worthy of the Great Lakes region: Paul Bunyan’s axe.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL ANNOUNCER : Here it comes. Paul Bunyan’s axe will return to Minnesota, as they have knocked off the Badgers 24-7.
WANSCHURA: With two states so passionate about beating each other, it’s easy to see how the rivalry would break out in other areas too. Like when this happened six years ago.
WTMJ RADIO: Wisconsin's afternoon news on WTMJ.
WANSCHURA: Radio talk show host John Mecure interviewed Sara Meaney, who was Wisconsin’s Secretary of Tourism. It started out innocently enough.
JOHN MERCURE: Let's talk about boating season during this national travel and tourism week.
SARA MEANEY: Happy to. So, it is National Travel and Tourism Week, so it's basically a tourism celebration road show all week…
WANSCHURA: And then out of nowhere, Minnesota catches a stray.
MEANEY: So Wisconsin, many people may not be aware, actually has 15,000 freshwater lakes.
MERCURE: More than Minnesota?
MEANEY: More than Minnesota.
MERCURE: Yeah!
MEANEY: Absolutely. We win, we win.
WANSCHURA: To be clear, Minnesotans say they have way more lakes than Wisconsin. Minnesota is the land of “10,000 Lakes” – it says so on its license plates. So, after a few unprovoked words from Wisconsin’s secretary of tourism, it didn’t take long for Minnesota to punch back.
One user on X posted, “Nice try sconnies. We have the lakes; you make the cheese, clear?” Someone else tweeted, “Wisconsin, the land of 5,898 lakes and a smattering of ponds.”
This wasn’t the first time the lake debate took off. And it wasn’t the last. So, which state really does have more lakes? Who wins? That’s coming up after the break.
WANSCHURA: To help us get to the bottom of this lake debate, we should probably look at a lake. Or at least what Wisconsin calls a lake.
WANSCHURA: Okay. Where are you at, Geo?
GEO RUTHERFORD: I was just driving past hundreds. I'm telling you, hundreds of little black and white cows. So cute. Exactly what you would expect and want from driving in Wisconsin.
WANSCHURA: Geo Rutherford lives in Wisconsin. So we’d expect her to be on team Sconnie. Plus, she knows a lot about lakes – she’s even written a book about them.
WANSCHURA: And are you just pulled off on the side of the road there?
RUTHERFORD: Yes … just out my window on the right side, I can see the lake, but it's completely surrounded by – what are these called – cattails. Like marshy cattails and kind of like these dead looking trees. And I just got passed by an enormous- like the third enormous tractor that I've seen.
WANSCHURA: Geo is looking at Larch Lake. It’s a lake in south central Wisconsin.
WANSCHURA: You're seeing it for the first time, is that right?
RUTHERFORD: Yes. Yeah. I've never seen Larch Lake before.
WANSCHURA: This is a new experience for you. Does it look like a lake to you?
RUTHERFORD: You know, okay, wait, we're waiting for another farm truck … I don’t think that if I were driving by this, that I would've called it a lake like, 'cause you can see the entire boundary of the lake from this spot on the side of the road that I'm standing on. …So, that's kind of an interesting part of it where it feels small. So, I think I would've said it was a pond if I was driving past it.
WANSCHURA: And that’s coming from a Wisconsinite! It just doesn’t pass the eyeball test.
RUTHERFORD: Oh no. Somebody's coming to talk to me. Oh, no. Hi. Oh my gosh.
WANSCHURA: Just then, a Wisconsin farmer with his golden retriever pulls up.
RUTHERFORD: Hi. Yeah, this is for a podcast 'cause this is called a lake, and it's really small. So, I'm truly here just on the phone with my podcast friend who wanted to determine whether it felt like it was a lake or not. … But it's only- it's 2.21 acres, which means it's only 0.01 acres large enough to be considered a lake by the state of Wisconsin. So that's why we're here. Have a nice day! I am scaring the farmers.
WANSCHURA: He probably didn’t know it at the time, but this farmer just got an education on how Wisconsin claims to have 15,000 lakes. Because to get that number – the state counts anything over 2.2 acres – according to the Wisconsin DNR, which is pretty small.
That’s led some to entertaining comments – like this one on Reddit:
“Sometimes I take a leak out behind my garage, and it forms a puddle. If I was in Wisconsin, I could call it a lake.”
See hyperbole is common in this rivalry.
Minnesota, on the other hand, defines lakes waaay differently than Wisconsin. Instead of 2.2 acres and above, Minnesota says it’s a lake if it’s 10 acres and above. There’s a reason for that.
JOHN DOWNING: Below 10 acres, you start losing your ability to generate waves on that water body.
WANSCHURA: That’s John Downing. He’s a lake scientist and the director of Minnesota Sea Grant. He says waves play a huge role in determining ponds from lakes. Ponds aren’t big enough to produce them – lakes are.
DOWNING: The reason for that is that the wind has gotta blow across water for a pretty long time in order to begin to start that wave action. Then that wave action…washes the shore, changes the beach and actually washes away the muddy sediments and puts them in the middle of the lake and leaves behind the coarser sediments.
WANSCHURA: That’s why people like to hang out at lakes. But since ponds are too small for waves, they tend to have more stagnant vegetation and muck along the shoreline. No one wants to spread out a towel on that.
Now John Downing’s not here to make enemies. But he says if Minnesota defined its lakes like Wisconsin does, it would have around 31,000 of them.
DOWNING: Okay. So, you know, beat that Wisconsin.
WANSCHURA: Minnesota: 1 – Wisconsin: 0.
It turns out, there is no universal definition for lakes and ponds – anywhere in the world. That’s why Minnesota and Wisconsin have such wildly different takes on it. But beyond rivalries and bragging rights, does it really matter that a universal standard doesn’t exist?
DAVID RICHARDSON: It does matter.
WANSCHURA: David Richardson is an aquatic ecologist at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
RICHARDSON: Language matters and semantics matter.
WANSCHURA: That idea was behind a study David co-authored in 2022.
It’s called, “A functional definition to distinguish ponds from lakes and wetlands”.
RICHARDSON: Oftentimes when we are making comparisons or when we are citing other studies, we are doing it based off of the words that those authors are using. And when we don't have the same language or the same definitions, then we could be comparing apples and oranges.
WANSCHURA: David found that ponds and lakes are fundamentally different. Ponds, for example, are generally warmer and have more vegetation. That means the entire ecosystem is different. And when no universal definition exists for ponds or lakes, it can actually make it harder to study them, harder to manage them properly, and it can get in the way of legal protections.
RICHARDSON: How we establish regulations and monitoring and enforcement of those regulations is entirely dependent on what we are calling these things.
WANSCHURA: So, David and his colleagues came up with their own parameters. Basically, if a water body is less than 12 acres and less than 15 feet deep – it’s a pond. If it’s 12 acres or more and 15 feet or deeper – then it’s a lake.
WANSCHURA: So David, I gotta ask you, you know, Minnesota defines anything 10 acres and above. Wisconsin's 2.2 acres and above – they count that as a lake. In your paper, you propose anything 12 acres and above. Who wins this border battle? RICHARDSON: I'm hesitant to declare a victor as I have collaborators and friends in both states. But I think if you use the larger cutoff, then Minnesota is the winner in that case.
WANSCHURA: Minnesota 2. Wisconsin 0. No matter what definition you use, Minnesota wins every time.
There’s one thing you should know though. David says even with his definition, lakes and ponds don’t always fit into nice little defined boxes. Like how sometimes it can be tricky to figure out if something is a stream or a river, a mountain or a hill.
RICHARDSON: We like to think about things as humans, as like this or that, because we like categorization. We like making discreet values because our brain works that way, and that's why we categorize things. That's why we make generalizations.
WANSCHURA: So, David says there’s some gray area between lakes and ponds. Larch Lake in south central Wisconsin is a great example of this. That’s where Geo Rutherford is still hanging out.
RUTHERFORD: Uh, oh, sorry. Wait, another farm truck.
WANSCHURA: Man, it's rush hour there.
WANSCHURA: Even though Larch Lake is only 2.21 acres – and wouldn’t be counted as a lake in Minnesota – there is something unique about it. It's a kettle lake.
RUTHERFORD: A kettle lake means that a chunk of the glaciers that covered this area was left behind here, and then kind of melted and created this big dip in the earth, which eventually filled with water. So, there's no rivers or little streams that enter into this lake. It's entirely just fed by groundwater.
WANSCHURA: Most importantly – it’s 18 feet deep – which, by David Richardson’s definition, is deeper than a pond. So, I asked him how he would categorize this body of water.
RICHARDSON: I mean, based off of our formal definition, we would call that a small lake.
WANSCHURA: The Minnesotans aren't gonna be happy, David.
RICHARDSON: No, they're not.
WANSCHURA: There’s a win for you Winsconsin. We’ll let you have this kettle lake. And if you just can’t stand the idea that Minnesota wins in the total number of lakes, I have some good news for you. There is one state that has it beat: Alaska. It has over 3,000,000 lakes. At least according to how they count them.
