My article in the Oct. 5 issue of the Tribune regarding the origins of Katherine and Hanson (also known as Dress and Monkey) islands in Fountain Lake may have caused some confusion.

After all, how could something called a floating bog be converted into a permanent island? To help answer this in part, I have been informed about similar bogs in our northern lakes. Also, I have my own theory about how these local bogs of years ago were formed, plus the locations of another former bog in Fountain Lake and a very legitimate and overlooked island..

About two weeks ago a Tribune reader told me about similar islands mentioned in the book, &uot;Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country,&uot; by Minnesota author Louise Erdrich (published 2003 by the National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.).

Erdrich’s book is based on the islands and Ojibwe (Chippewa) life on and around the Lake of the Woods. The part brought to my attention was called mirage islands.

Whenever high water occurs in this large lake, big chunks of bog break loose from the bottom and start to drift away with the wind. Erdrich says lodge owners around the lake try to keep these equivalents of floating islands away from their beaches and docks. Also, the bogs can in time change the contours of any islands they happen to hit on their wanderings around the lake. As she explained, those strange floating islands are deceptively solid looking and each is a biomass composed of reeds, water weeds, cattails and other swampy vegetation.

When George Ruble built the first dam on the Shell Rock River in 1855, he flooded a small pond and a large swamp or wetland. The first dam collapsed in 1861 and was rebuilt in 1868, according to a map and information prepared by local historian L. W. Spicer in 1935.

Just when several bogs in Edgewater Bay, the upper part of what became the new Fountain Lake, broke loose and started to drift southward through the then much wider channel between the Oakwood Peninsula and Shoreland Heights isn’t known. Anyway, Spicer’s map shows the final destinations of three of the drifting bogs. One is now Katherine Island. The second is what he labeled Hansen (now also called Hanson, Dress or Monkey) Island. And the third bog ended up near the west end of Johnson Street at what’s now the city beach area.

I have a theory as to how the two islands in Fountain Lake were created. When the two bogs became stuck on shallow places near the lake’s bank or shore, someone decided plenty of dirt and rocks would make them more solid and island-like. The addition of soil could be done just about anytime, but the best time might have been during the winter. After all, the lake ice provided solid access to the former bogs. Thus, teams of horses pulling wagons of fill could go to the islands to dump their loads. Then, when the ice and snow melted, the fill settled down on the matted vegetation. In time the two islands were created and eventually became outstanding units of the city’s park system.

While we’re on the subject of islands, there’s a third isolated place in Fountain Lake which happens to meet the dictionary definition of a piece of land surrounded by water. This particular place is located in the bay near the west end of Shore Acres Drive. It doesn’t show up on any city maps I’ve seen.

This very small island is a natural creation based on a higher plot of land which was above the lake level when Bancroft Bay was created by water backed up by the dam just north of the Bridge Avenue Bridge.

I do have several questions about this third Fountain Lake island. First, does it have a name? Second, who owns this island? And, third, should it still be left alone as it has been for some 140 or so years?

(Tribune feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears Fridays.)