Buffalo Lake, MN

Buffalo Lake is a Renville County city with 660 people at the 2020 census. It was surveyed and platted in 1881, named for a nearby lake and for the buffalo that once moved across the surrounding prairie. U.S. Route 212 is the main east–west road through town, and the county's Twin Cities and Western rail line follows the same broad corridor. The name sounds like a water-town promise, but the original lake inside the city limits was drained in the 1920s during a county ditch campaign to turn marshland into farmland.

Today's recreation map points to Lake Allie and Lake Preston, about ten minutes north, while Buffalo Lake keeps its own parks, tennis court, softball field, volleyball courts, and community center. Buffalo Lake/Hector/Stewart schools serve local students, and the city maintains police, fire, first-responder, and ambulance services. The local thread is a prairie city whose name preserves a vanished 40-acre lake, while nearby water, farm roads, and public services keep the place tied to the landscape that gave it its name.