About 14,000 years ago in what is now central Minnesota, Ringo Lake was formed
from ice blocks in the out wash and till deposits of a receding glacier called the
Des Moines Lobe.
It is 774 acres in size and is the headwater of the southward draining Hawk Creek watershed.
Hawk Creek eventually enters the Minnesota then Mississippi River. |
In the early 1870's Gustaf Berg settled with his new wife Helena on the north side of Ringo Lake.
She was a widower with homestead and together, they turned it into a farm.
Helena passed in 1888 and Gust remarried in 1889 to my great grandmother Mathilda.
The Berg farm is now home to it's fifth generation of descendants. |
A few years earlier in 1861, my mother's great grandfather, John Swenson, settled on the south side of the lake.
He survived the Indian Uprising in 1862 and returned to his homestead in 1866, becoming quite prosperous by the time he died in 1902.
Many of his descendants still call it home. |
