Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Moose Lake, MN

Moose Lake is a city in Carlton County, Minnesota, about 43 miles southwest of Duluth, where Interstate 35 meets state highways 27 and 73.

Moose Lake was one of the communities devastated by the great 1918 Cloquet Fire, one of the worst natural disasters in Minnesota history; the story of the fire is told today at the city's historic Soo Line depot museum, and the Minnesota Home Guard assisted the area after the fire.

The population of Moose Lake was 2,789 at the 2020 census, but the census counted only 600 households, because a large share of residents live in group quarters — the city hosts one of Minnesota's two Sex Offender Program treatment facilities.

That institutional population gives Moose Lake a remarkable census profile: the 2020 census counted 282 men for every 100 women in the city.

Moose Lake State Park, with its quiet lake and campground, sits just outside the city.

Moose Lake recorded a temperature of -53 degrees Fahrenheit, among the coldest official readings in Minnesota, in weather records stretching back to 1913.

Moose Lake was depicted as a hideout location in the 1996 film Fargo — though the cabin scene was actually filmed on Square Lake near Stillwater — and it is the hometown of Blu and Linda at the start of the 2011 animated film Rio.

The Moose Lake Star Gazette, the local weekly newspaper published on Thursdays, traces its roots to papers published in town since 1896.

Moose Lake's population more than doubled between 1930 (742) and 1940 (1,432), then jumped again after 1990 as state facilities expanded.