Largest lakes in Minnesota

The largest lakes

The largest lake wholly inside Minnesota is Red Lake in Beltrami County: 283,813 acres on the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ own map, which draws Upper and Lower Red Lake as one lake. Next come Mille Lacs Lake (128,250 acres), Leech Lake (103,444) and Lake Winnibigoshish (56,471).

Counting only the part inside the state, Lake of the Woods is bigger than all of them: 305,576 of its acres lie in Minnesota. It is a border water, shared with Canada, so it has its own list below.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, hydrography (lake, pond, reservoir and mine-pit lake classes), via the Metropolitan Council’s data mirror. Fetched 26 Oct 2026. Acres are the area of the DNR’s outline of each lake; a lake mapped in bays counts once.

The top 25

The 25 largest lakes wholly inside Minnesota, in order. The 25th, Pokegama Lake, covers 6,721 acres. Island Lake Reservoir is a reservoir on the DNR map; the map’s lake classes include reservoirs, and so does our count of Minnesota’s lakes. 17 of the 25 have a lake page on this site, linked by name.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, hydrography (lake, pond, reservoir and mine-pit lake classes), via the Metropolitan Council’s data mirror. Fetched 26 Oct 2026.

Border lakes

56 lakes on the DNR map cross Minnesota’s border with Canada or a neighbouring state. Each is counted here by its Minnesota part, the acres the DNR files under a Minnesota county. Counted that way, one is larger than Red Lake, and six would make the top 25 above: Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake, Basswood Lake, Lac la Croix, Namakan Lake and Saganaga Lake.

The table lists the 17 whose Minnesota part is 1,000 acres or more, with the whole lake beside it, both in acres, and the share inside Minnesota. For Lake of the Woods, the DNR’s facts page gives 307,010 acres in Minnesota of 950,400 in all; LakeFinder’s figure for the whole lake is 725,583 acres.

Minnesota part: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, hydrography (lake, pond, reservoir and mine-pit lake classes), via the Metropolitan Council’s data mirror. Fetched 26 Oct 2026. Whole lake: Minnesota DNR LakeFinder lake area, fetched 26 Oct 2026; for a lake with a page here, the page’s figure (both sides of the DNR map, within 0.5% of LakeFinder’s). Neighbour: LakeFinder’s border field. Facts page: Minnesota DNR, Minnesota facts: water, read 26 Oct 2026.

How big is big

Of the 14,174 Minnesota lakes of 10 acres or more, 16 cover 10,000 acres or more, 299 cover 1,000 or more and 3,055 cover 100 or more. The middle lake of 10 acres or more covers 32 acres.

Together these lakes cover 2,895,863 acres, about 4,525 square miles, leaving out Lake Superior. The ten largest, counting border waters by their Minnesota part, hold 35% of that area.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, hydrography (lake, pond, reservoir and mine-pit lake classes), via the Metropolitan Council’s data mirror. Fetched 26 Oct 2026. Border waters count by their Minnesota part.

The largest lake in every county

Every county’s largest lake, with its count of lakes of 10 acres or more. A lake that spans counties is listed in the county the DNR files most of it under. Dodge has no lake of 10 acres or more on the map. In ten counties (Fillmore, Goodhue, Houston, Mower, Norman, Pennington, Pipestone, Red Lake, Rock and Wabasha) the largest lake covers less than 100 acres. In three (Fillmore, Houston and Red Lake) the largest lake has no name on the DNR map. In two counties the largest is not in the lake-or-pond class: Pennington (Red Lake River Reservoir, reservoir) and Pipestone (Split Rock Reservoir, reservoir).

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, hydrography (lake, pond, reservoir and mine-pit lake classes), via the Metropolitan Council’s data mirror. Fetched 26 Oct 2026. Lakes with no county on the map are placed by their inside point within U.S. Census county lines.

Against the DNR’s facts page

The DNR’s facts page lists the ten largest lakes wholly inside Minnesota with an acreage for each; the page was last reviewed in 2013. Nine of its ten are on our top ten. For those, the current map’s acreage runs from 7% below the facts page to 3% above it. The map is the one we can recount, so this page prints the map’s figures. In the table, “Facts” is the facts page’s acreage and “Map” the DNR map’s.

The tenth, Mud Lake in Marshall County, is classed as a wetland on the current map (13,970 acres), so it is not counted as a lake. Pelican Lake in St. Louis County takes its place.

Minnesota DNR, Minnesota facts: water (dnr.state.mn.us), read 26 Oct 2026; Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, hydrography (lake, pond, reservoir and mine-pit lake classes), via the Metropolitan Council’s data mirror. Fetched 26 Oct 2026.

How we measured

Every lake here is counted by the rule of our guide to how many lakes Minnesota has: the DNR hydrography’s lake-or-pond, reservoir and mine-pit lake classes; one lake per DNR lake number, so a lake the DNR maps in bays counts once, as a whole; a border water by its Minnesota part; Lake Superior left out. Wetlands, river pools and drained lakebeds are other classes and are not lakes in this count. Acreage is the area of the DNR’s outline of each lake, a map figure, not a survey of today’s shoreline.

The full count, by size and county, is in How many lakes are in Minnesota?. Our Minnesota lake pages are listed on the Minnesota page.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, hydrography (lake, pond, reservoir and mine-pit lake classes), via the Metropolitan Council’s data mirror. Fetched 26 Oct 2026. Minnesota DNR data used under the DNR General Data and Software License. Not for navigation.