An Excerpt from the book Richfield: Minnesota’s Oldest Suburb by Frederick Johnson.
Construction of interstate highways, never a pretty sight in full swing, did more than tear up a lot of 1950s and 1960s Richfield real estate. Roadwork, specifically on Interstate 494, resulted in Wood Lake draining almost completely away. And this wasn’t the first time the lake’s survival had come into question.
Before humankind began causing issues for what today is Richfield’s most prominent lake, a colony of North American beavers, nature’s engineers, undertook a major nineteenth century construction project. The determined beavers skillfully built and improved a dam across the northern part of Wood Lake, creating the new Richfield Lake in the process. Early Richfield settlers used the dam as a handy shortcut, walking across Wood Lake instead of going around it. Prior to beaver dams, today’s chain of lakes–Grass, Richfield and Wood–were connected into one body of water.
Low water at Wood Lake following the mid-twentieth century roadwork did not surprise longtime residents. Water level changes in the unpredictable lake were not new. Records from 1865 show it empty and almost forgotten. Just three decades later it boasted an average of ten feet in depth. A local angler landed a forty-five inch northern pike in 1917.Â
By 1927 another slump left Wood Lake water levels six feet below normal. Villagers drilled a well in an attempt to add groundwater to the shrinking lake. During America’s “dust bowl” drought in the 1930s, it again went completely dry again. The community shut down the well to preserve precious water. A group of opportunistic Richfield sportsmen decided to use the dry lakebed for a fox hunt. Wood Lake’s waters varied in depth during the 1940s and 1950s but were deep enough to allow recreational access to those with lakeside homes. The village’s Grant Park, located on the site of today’s nature center, featured three boat launches.
Highway construction threatened the lake in the 1950s. Road builders nearly ran Interstate 35 into Wood Lake in 1955, but did not cause water levels to drop. Work on I-494 in 1960, however, was another matter. Highway designers decided to deal with a high water table near the interstate by boring through a solid cap of underground clay. The plan worked as water flowed down to an aquifer. But that subterranean tide was soon joined by runoff from the Wood Lake watershed. Those waters now drained through the new bore holes, causing the lake’s water level to drop ten feet by 1962. This process left a muddy, marshy wetland in central Richfield.