Gem Lake, MN

Gem Lake is a Ramsey County city that grew out of the older White Bear landscape. A map from 1843 called the nearby water ‘Bear’s Lake,’ roads appeared in the 1850s, and the Town of White Bear formed in 1858. A century later, on June 30, 1959, residents voted to incorporate Gem Lake as Ramsey County’s newest suburb. The city’s name sounds like a polished postcard, but its story is really about old lake maps, township lines, and a vote that made a new city out of older countryside.