The Lost Lakes of Lake Hanska and Linden Townships
Ragnhild Syverson: 1848-1933 (Paternal Great-grandmother)
Ole Syverson: 1875-1933 (Paternal Granduncle)
Peter Peterson: 1815-1880 (Paternal Great-grandfather)
Paul Peterson: 1867-1941 (Paternal Grandfather)
While looking at old plat maps of my hometown area to find
my ancestors’ farms, I noticed that the maps contained lakes I had never heard about
before this. After talking to my brother, who still farms our grandfather’s
land, and after looking at current maps, I realized that these lakes no longer
exist. The advent of agricultural drainage tile and the construction of
regional drainage ditches led to many of Minnesota’s famed 10,000 lakes drying
up and being converted to farmland.
I examined plat maps for Lake Hanska Township and Linden
Township in Brown County Minnesota from five different time points: 1886, 1905,
1914, 1943 and 1953. The changes in the lakes over that sixty-plus- year span
are obvious. My ancestors and their neighbors helped to kill Lake Emerson, Lake
Dane and Broome Lake. The remaining lakes, Lake Linden, Lake Omsrud and Lake
Hanska, show their acreage shrinking over the decades.
When my great-grandparents Ragnhild and Ove Syverson and
Peter and Anna Peterson Joramo arrived and claimed homesteads in Linden and
Lake Hanska Townships in the 1880s, the area was fairly flat, with vast
expanses of prairie grasses alternating with wet and marshy areas. In addition
to the lakes and marshes, some land featured vernal pools—areas with standing
water during the spring melt and the rainy season. Needing water for their
animals, fields and their own use, immigrants often moved close to the lakes
and wet areas to access reliable water supplies. They began plowing up the
prairie land to grow crops.
The maps below show the plats of Lake Hanska and Linden
townships in 1886. My great-grandparents had just arrived in the area and had acquired
their homesteads. Their land lay between Linden Lake and Lake Emerson in south
Linden Township. Between the two lakes the map shows half a dozen small ponds
or prairie potholes—evidence that the area was very low in elevation and very
wet.
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| Lake Hanska Township 1886 |
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| Linden Township 1886 |
The Lake Hanska 1905 map shows only a few small changes.
Broome Lake is shrinking; an entire lower segment has transitioned from lake to
marsh. This map is more detailed than the 1886 one and shows marshland all
around Broome Lake. Despite this, the map shows settlers have claimed the
marshland as part of their farm homesteads.
 |
| 1905 Lake Hanska Township. Lower map shows marshes. |
The 1905 Linden map shows that the small potholes/ponds
between Linden Lake and Emerson Lake are gone, and the land is being farmed.
This is the era when the use of field tile became popular. The area must have
been tiled, draining the water away to Linden and Emerson Lakes or to small
streams.
 |
| 1905 Linden Township |
The 1914 maps show more radical changes. The Lake Hanska map
no longer shows Broome Lake or its surrounding marshes and sloughs. Instead,
the area is criss-crossed by County Ditches, each numbered. These ditches
provided waterways to carry away water removed from fields by tiling. The
former lakebed and the sloughs are now part of various farms.
 |
| 1914 Lake Hanska Township, with drainage ditches marked in red. |
The 1914 Linden map no longer shows depth markers for
Emerson and Dane Lakes—they are drying up. Even more telling, the small lake to
the left of Linden Lake is now listed as a “dry lake bed”.
Jumping ahead to 1943, it is easy to see how advances in
farming have radically changed the surface water in the two townships.
The 1943 Lake Hanska map has no remaining evidence that
Broome Lake ever existed. Only farms remain. Omsrud’s shore is a little
tighter, as is the southern tip of Lake Hanska. Farms are pressing up to the
lakeshores.
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| 1943 Lake Hanska Township Plat Map |
The 1943 Linden map shows dramatic change. Both Dane Lake
and Emerson Lake have disappeared, and the lakebeds have been sliced into
pie-shaped farm properties. It appears that a long drainage ditch has been
built (the zig-zaggy line that stretches across the map, marked by the red
arrows) to drain water from the former Dane Lake to empty into what had been
marked as a dry lakebed on the 1914 map. The tiny lake has reappeared with
depth lines showing that it is a fairly deep body of water.
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| 1943 Linden Township Plat Map showing loss of Emerson and Dane Lakes and extensive drainage ditches. |
By 1953, the surface water has shrunken a bit more. On the
Lake Hanska Township map, I have highlighted some of the drainage ditches that
appear on the map. Surface water has been diverted through tiling and ditches
to drain into Lake Hanska and Lake Omsrud. Interestingly, some small ponds or
marshes have appeared between the two lakes, marked with red arrows. The lakes
themselves are a bit smaller than they were.
 |
| 1953 Lake Hanska Plat Map, showing marshy areas (red arrows) and drainage ditches in yellow. |
The 1953 Linden map shows extensive drainage ditches as well
as areas of marshy ground, some highlighted by blue arrows. The surface water
has been channeled to the lowest areas to make remaining land more arable.
 |
| 1953 Linden Township plat map, with some of the drainage ditches in yellow, and some of the marshes indicated by blue arrows. |
Today’s aerial photo of the two townships shows even less
surface water. Tiling has become even more effective, turning marshy areas into
productive fields.
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| 2025 Aerial View of the Lake Hanska and Linden Township areas. |
While the changes in surface water in Lake Hanska and Linden
Townships certainly benefitted farmers, providing them with better farming
conditions, it substantially changed the environment as well. The extensive
marshlands that existed before settlers arrived, and that helped recharge the groundwater
system, are now gone. Only a few lakes remain to hold surface water. This
change destroyed valuable wildlife habitat as well as negatively impacting the
groundwater system. My great-grandparents were part of a vast transformation of
the landscape and ecosystem of southern Minnesota.
Sources:
1916 Plat Map of Brown County Minnesota. https://geo.lib.umn.edu/plat_books/stateofmn1916/reference/map00850a.jpg
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