Tim Engstrom, Pothole Prairie

People keep telling me: &8220;Albert Lea Lake is the largest natural lake between Lake Minnetonka and the Gulf of Mexico.&8221;

I’m a geographic sort of fellow. No, that’s not giving it enough emphasis. Hmm. Let’s me state it plainly: I’m a geography nut.

I like to write and I like maps. If I hadn’t entered the field of journalism, I probably would have entered geography. If they had the National Geographic Bee when I was in school, I like to think I would have gone far. In fact, I’m a bit bitter they didn’t have it when I was a boy.

OK, maybe not that bitter.

But I am fond of maps.

The first time I heard that saying about Albert Lea Lake, I thought it couldn’t be true. I mean, Spirit Lake in northern Iowa just seems bigger. It looks bigger on the maps. (Maps made by Iowa and Minnesota show enough of the neighboring states to compare.)

So where did the notion of Albert Lea Lake’s size come from?

I’m told that’s what hosts on the Pelican Breeze boat tell tourists. The boat, by the way, is a great attraction for Albert Lea Lake. I can’t wait to ride on it.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one who disputed the statement. I floated it past some others, one being staff writer Ed Shannon. They, too, thought it wasn’t so.

After hearing it mentioned again last week, I set forward on researching it.

Lake Minnetonka is 14,004 acres.

Albert Lea Lake is 2,654 acres.

Of course, I’m assuming the statement means to say in the general area south, not latitudinal south. Because 6.34 million-acre Lake Erie IS farther south than Albert Lea Lake.

Spirit Lake, the largest natural body of water in Iowa, is 5,684 acres. West Okoboji Lake is 3,857 acres. Clear Lake, about 36 miles straight south of Albert Lea Lake, is 3,643 acres. And don’t forget that 26,000-acre natural lake in Lousiana called Catahoula Lake.

So the saying is bogus. Albert Lea Lake is a natural lake. It is not the largest natural lake south of Lake Minnetonka.

Maybe people thought it was the largest natural lake in southern Minnesota. That is to say, is it perhaps the largest lake between Lake Minnetonka and the Iowa border?

No.

Swan Lake in Nicollet County is 9,346 acres.

Lake Shetek in Murray County is 3,596 acres.

Maybe it was the longest shoreline on a natural lake south of Lake Minnetonka?

Albert Lea Lake has 26 miles of shoreline. Lake Minnetonka has 125 miles. Let’s find out.

Spirit Lake has 15.25 miles of shoreline.

West Okoboji Lake has 19.6 miles.

Clear Lake has 13.6 miles.

Over by Ceylon, Tuttle Lake, which cover 2,360 acres, has 10.9 miles of shoreline.

It seems Albert Lea Lake wins.

But then you look at Catahoula Lake in Louisiana. It has 1,200 miles of shoreline.

Lake Erie &045; if we count is latitudinal south &045; has 871 miles of shoreline.

What about south of Lake Minnetonka but still in Minnesota?

Lake Shetek in Murray County has 31.7 miles of shoreline.

Swan Lake in Nicollet County has 76 miles of shoreline.

That swampy area that is the Heron Lakes in Jackson County has 8,251 acres of water and about 28 miles of shoreline. It’s so shallow that it changes its size dramatically with seasons and can be one big body of water or a number of them.

During my research, I didn’t look up statistics on other big blue splotches on the map without a black line across one end (the dam), but I did look up a lot of lakes to see if they were natural. (And some natural lakes have dams, just like Albert Lea Lake does.) Most lakes south of U.S. Highway 20 across Iowa seem to be formed by a U.S. Corps of Engineers dam of some sort of another. Most lakes south of Highway 20 are manmade. We are blessed here in the Upper Midwest.

But there are some big natural bodies of water here and there, such as Lake Jack Lee in southern Arkansas, Reelfoot Lake in western Tennessee (created by violent New Madrid fault earthquakes in 1811 and 1812), Wawasee Lake in Indiana and Caddo Lake in eastern Texas. The Mississippi River offers many natural oxbow lakes, such as Horseshoe Lake in Illinois, Lake Chicot in Arkansas (at 20 miles long, the largest U.S. oxbow lake) and Lake Bruin in Louisiana.

All of the lakes in the above paragraph are larger than Albert Lea Lake.

So with all these facts, what can we conclude?

We can say Albert Lea is a big lake.

It is not too big.

It is not too small.

It is just right.

Propane and propane accessories

Thank you to Raleigh’s Ace Hardware on Bridge Avenue in Albert Lea. Owners Dennis and Peggy Raleigh sent me a 16.4-ounce canister of Coleman propane fuel to let me know that, yes, their store does carry the stuff. I grill at home using a little camping stove, and I had problems finding where to buy the little canisters. Now I know. I like to camp, so perhaps I will check out what other camping gear Ace Hardware carries.

(Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom’s column appears every Tuesday.)