On Lake of the Isles, the Slow Work of Holding a Shoreline Together

On a clear morning the loop around Lake of the Isles looks like it was always meant to be exactly this: a calm sheet of water, a ring of mowed grass, a path made for an unhurried walk. Lowry Hill and East Isles residents have absorbed that image so completely that it is easy to forget the lake is, in large part, a human invention, and that the work of keeping it healthy is happening right now along the banks they pass every day.

From Marsh to Mirror

The lake we walk around today was largely engineered. Beginning in 1898, the predecessor of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board undertook a sweeping dredging project to deepen the basin and reshape its outline, converting a shallow, reedy marsh into the clear-water lake that gave the surrounding neighborhood its prestige. The bays and islands that make the Isles distinctive were carved and graded; the smooth shoreline was a design decision, not an accident of nature.

That transformation came with a cost that took the better part of a century to fully reveal itself. Hardened, turf-dominated banks shed stormwater and sediment straight into the lake. The aesthetic the lake was prized for, smooth lawns running to the waterline, turned out to be one of the worst possible designs for water quality, offering no buffer between the city's runoff and the open water.

Letting the Edge Breathe

Since the early 2000s, the Park Board has worked methodically to undo some of that damage, addressing chronic flooding around the lake through shoreline restoration, replanting of the littoral edge where water meets land, and the raising of lower pedestrian paths above the floodplain using fill. The strategy treats primary, secondary and tertiary flood zones differently, an admission that not every stretch of bank needs the same treatment.

The push is part of a far larger effort. The Park Board's long-range Plan for Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles, the Cedar-Isles plan its commissioners approved in July 2023, sets a default of stabilizing the shoreline with native vegetation everywhere except formal access points. Funding has followed: a recent appropriation from the state's Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, recommended through the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources, is aimed squarely at restoring eroding, low-habitat lakeshore on the chain.

Walk the northeast bays today and you will see the result: clumps of sedge and native grasses where there used to be mowed lawn, root systems knitting the soil together so that a hard rain carries less of the bank into the water. It is not as photogenic as a golf-course edge. It is far better for the lake, holding the bank in place, filtering runoff, and giving birds and insects something to live in.