One name which has become an interesting part of life in both Albert Lea and Alden is Morin.

Monday, August 27, 2001

One name which has become an interesting part of life in both Albert Lea and Alden is Morin.

In Albert Lea there’s Morin Park, plus a short street known as Morin Lane. In Alden the scenic center of the community is a place named Morin Lake, plus Morin Park. And for the present lake and the site of a former lake, the names used are derived from an Irish immigrant and Freeborn County pioneer named William Morin.

Morin was born in 1827 at Maryborough, Ireland, and was trained to become a civil engineer. He came to the U.S. about 1847 and lived in the Niagara region of New York until 1856 when the move was made to the Midwest.

Morin is considered to be one of the founders of Albert Lea. He became a real estate investor and land speculator and soon owned half of the city’s original site. By the 1880s he was the largest land owner in the county. Morin was the first county auditor, first county registrar of deeds, member of the county board, member the first Albert Lea City Council (in 1878), and member of the governor’s commission which established what later became the Owatonna State School for Children.

Morin is also considered to be one of the founders of Alden. When the railroad went west from Albert Lea in 1869, he purchased more land in that area.

The 1949 booklet with the chapter heading of the &uot;History of the Village of Alden&uot; says:

&uot; The Gem Lake, on the shores of which the village so picturesquely stands, was until 1871, a wild slough, and it was owing to the energy and public spirit of Messrs. A. G. Hall, P. Hansen and …. Wm. Morin that the water was confined by a substantial dam, and what was formerly an unattractive and unhealthy marsh, was changed into a beautiful and limpid lake.&uot; (Limpid is defined in the dictionary as being clear and transparent.)

In time, this body of water originally named Gem Lake become known as Morin Lake, the second lake in the county to have this name.

The 1911 Freeborn County History explained that the original size of this new lake was 25 acres. In 1883 and 1884, Morin had four acres on the east side of the lake filled in. This action at Alden was, in a way, a duplication of what had happened a few years earlier in Albert Lea.

Morin may have created a new lake at Alden, and this was, and still is, a plus factor. However, he was also the prime cause of the elimination of a small natural lake in what’s now the center of Albert Lea. His actions regarding this once pristine prairie pothole may be hard to classify, but it could be considered by some as a negative factor.

According to the May 27, 1940 special issue of the Tribune saluting Colonel Albert Lea Days, this once tranquil spring-fed body of water lasted for less than 25 years after George Ruble built his dam and mill at the outlet of Fountain Lake. According to the article, &uot;The lake meandered irregularly over parts of seven of our city blocks, and roughly speaking, lay north of College Street, west of Washington Avenue, south of Clark Street, and east of Adams Avenue. The playgrounds once lay under the deepest part of the lake, where the water was about fifteen feet above the bottom.&uot;

During its short life as a part of Albert Lea’s history,the small lake had three names. The first one was the jolly label of Merry’s Little Lake, which came about because one of the city’s first settlers, Lorenzo Merry, owned the entire area. Then the name was changed to Morin’s Lake when the Irish immigrant purchased Merry’s property. A few years later the local citizens decided to use the name of Spring Lake to indicate the real source of the water.

This lake may have been a place for fish, waterfowl, a handy spot for cattle from nearby pastures to get a drink, a good swimming hole, and maybe even for ice skating. Yet, the small lake also became a convenient place to dump garbage and street sweepings,. And the greatest problem with the little lake was its tendency to overflow with excess water and flood nearby areas. In time, the troublesome and increasingly polluted shallow lake, what some folks considered to be a glorified swamp, became a matter of local concern. Something had to be done.

The Freeborn County Standard in its Feb. 20, 1879 issue said, &uot;It is proposed to improve Spring Lake by making a driveway 100 feet all around, with a crossing over to an island in the center, and a small island in each end of the lake.&uot;

Morin soon had a different idea. Later in 1879 he had a large crew of men cut down a grove of oak trees on a high hill just west of the lake near the railroad tracks. Another crew worked to drain the lake’s water into Fountain Lake and through a sewer line which emptied into Albert Lea Lake. Then horse-drawn scrapers were used to move the dirt off the hill into the former lake bed. Within a year the prairie pothole was nearly gone.

In 1880, Morin, Clarence Wedge, and Mary Armstrong gave the block once known as Spring Lake Park and now officially listed as Morin Park to the city.