Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Wolf Lake, MN

Wolf Lake is a small city in Becker County in northwestern Minnesota, sitting near the shores of the roughly 1,400-acre lake it is named for.

The surrounding Wolf Lake Township was first settled in 1888 by immigrants from Finland and was organized on April 4, 1896.

Local settlers named the lake for its shape — its form was said to suggest a wolf — and the township and city took the name from the lake.

The city of Wolf Lake was incorporated as a village on May 12, 1949, decades after the township around it was organized.

Wolf Lake's post office had a stop-and-start early history: it operated briefly from 1909 to 1911 under the name Wolf before being reestablished as Wolf Lake in 1947.

Wolf Lake had a population of 71 people at the 2020 census, up from just 31 residents in 2000 — the city more than doubled in size over those two decades.

At the 2010 census Wolf Lake had 57 residents in 22 households, and with a median age of just 25.3 years it was an unusually young community.

The whole city covers only 0.30 square miles, all of it land, making it one of the most compact municipalities in Becker County.

The highest point in Becker County, a hill rising to 1,861 feet with a U.S. Forest Service lookout tower, stands about two miles northeast of Wolf Lake.