The Lake

History of Lake Shamineau

Lake Name

An historical account of the name of Lake Shamineau comes from the book  Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia, Third Edition, by Warren Upham, Minnesota Historical Society Press 200, p. 383:

 “Near the northwest corner of the county, Scandia Valley Township has a fine group of lakes, beautiful for their hilly and wooded shores, numerous points, bays, and islands, and abounding in fish and waterfowl. Lake Alexander, the largest of this group, named before 1860 for Capt. (and later Maj.) Thomas L. Alexander, stationed at Fort Ripley, has Crow, Potato, and High Islands. It outflows to Fish Trap Lake and thence by Fish Trap Brook to the Long Prairie and Crow Wing Rivers. Shamano Lake, about two miles farther north, has this spelling on the map of Minnesota in 1860, derived, according to Gilfillan*, “from an old Indian named Shamanons, who lived there long ago,” but on the most recent maps it is spelled Shamineau, a French form of this Ojibwa name.”

*Nineteenth Century Minnesota historian Charles D. Gilfillan

Early times on the west end

The following excerpt is from the local historical book A Chosen Place: Land of Lake, Pine and Prairie written by Ella Hoover Topp and Sigfred A. Nelson. It refers to citations in the Motley Register newspaper by Editor John Drawz in the 1880s.

“However taken Mr. Drawz was with Lake Alexander and Fish Trap Lake, it was Lake Shamineau that had been the early picnic ground for most Motley folks. It was the favorite place for Sunday School picnics; many spent the Fourth of July at the lake. It was the west end of Lake Shamineau that provided the best shoreline for the picnics and for launching boats. All day celebrations would include bowery dances, fishing contests and boating. Ben Cale, a colorful Motley merchant who took much time off for hunting and fishing, built the first cabin at the lake. He must have expanded his building, as in the early 1900’s Hollie and Merton Merrill of Motley bought B.F. Cale’s camps and boats at Lake Shamineau. A permanent pavilion was built there and a substantial club house, named the West End Club was erected. In the days of livery stables, rigs were available to get people to the lake, and others took wagon loads of merrymakers to this spot. In 1924 Maynard Avery had purchased seventy acres of lake shore property on the south side of the lake and was in the process of building a resort. The report of this in the Motley Mercury foreshadowed the intense development of the shore line around Lake Shamineau.”

The east end access by Pat Crawford

     On September 1, 1913 John E. Mathewson, James E. Goodrich and Thomas V. Goodrich purchased all of Sec. 15, Twp. 132 Rge. 31 containing 577.62 acres, more or less. This section of land bordered one mile of the east end of Lake Shamineau. John was my maternal grandfather. James and Thomas were his two brothers, my great uncles. They purchased the land, built two homes on the easterly side of the section and three generations moved here from Table Rock Nebraska shortly thereafter. My mother Leila Mathewson was about 4 years old. The family that moved here at that time was my great-grandparents, George and Mary Monument at the east end access: “This property is a gift to the public by the Mathewson[1]Goodrich Families May 22, 1945 Susan Goodrich, son James Goodrich, daughter Leila Goodrich, my grandparents, John and Emma Mathewson and their children Mildred, Anna, Charles and Leila. My grandfather’s brother Thomas Goodrich and his sister Mary Goodrich remained in Nebraska, as they were adults and had teaching positions in Nebraska. They both were active in the ownership of and the family’s later real estate transactions and Mary moved to Minnesota and owned and lived in the Goodrich home with her brother James. Thomas often visited and lived summers here in his late years.

      In the mid 1940’s the family had the lake shore surveyed and staked and then began selling lots, retaining 10 lots for family members. The lot in which our home now lies, was given to my mother by my grandparents in 1946. As the Mathewson-Goodrich family planned to sell the lake shore, in the mid 1940’s they dedicated a 2 rod wide strip of land to Scandia Valley Township for public road purposes. They also gave the land to the township that is now the east end public access. In the late 1950’s the Scandia Valley township board of supervisors erected a monument in the northwest corner of that lake access property. The monument reads: “This property is a gift to the public by the Mathewson – Goodrich Families May 22, 1945.”

Originally published in the Spring 2006 Lake Shamineau Association Newsletter: