Just found a map from 1893 that shows a lake that never existed

I was poking around an estate sale in Minneapolis last weekend and grabbed a box of old maps for $20. Inside was this 1893 map of Minnesota with a big lake labeled 'Lake Kaweah' right where there's nothing but farmland today. I checked with the county historical society and they confirmed no such lake ever existed there. No idea if it was a surveyor's mistake or someone's joke, but it's going right on my weird map wall. Has anyone else run into a map with a completely made up place that's not a fantasy world?

2 comments

2 Comments

reese_bell3d ago

Oh I love stuff like this lol. My dad has an old 1930s road atlas of Texas that has a whole ghost town labeled that nobody in the state has ever been able to find any records for.

umaprice2d ago

My map wall is my pride and joy and that Lake Kaweah find would fit right in. I drove two hours to a little museum in Nebraska once because an old railroad map showed a town called "Sanderson" that turned out to be just a water tower and a boarded up general store that nobody could verify ever really had people living there. The lady running the place just shrugged and said maps were full of wishful thinking back then. Now I keep an eye out for those phantom towns and phantom lakes, they're way more interesting than the real ones.