Lake ID

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR) site ID 19007800. This link provides available information on lake location, morphometry, and fisheries.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) site ID 19-0078-00. This link provides available information on lake chemistry.

Gun Club Lake is in Dakota County, near the city of Eagan, and is entirely within Fort Snelling State Park. The Gun Club Lake North and Gun Club Lake South calcareous fens, a rare wetland having upwelling groundwater and unique plants, are found on the east side of Gun Club Lake and are being monitored to assess their viability (Young, 2021).

Gun Club Lake is in the floodplain of the Minnesota River. Floodplain lakes, with their complex hydrology and ecosystems, are subject to periodic flooding that introduces water, sediment, and aquatic life.

Gun Club Lake is 2.5 feet (0.76 meters) deep and has an area of 366 acres (148 hectares). It is classified as Class 2B water, making it suitable for warm-water aquatic life (MPCA, 2021).

Water quality monitoring activities for floodplain lakes have been either eliminated or reduced because of the regular intrusion of water from the Minnesota River. Sediment and paleolimnological assessments have been periodically completed to understand the quantity and quality of sediment deposition in some of the floodplain lakes from the Minnesota River. Information about water chemistry were not found for Gun Club Lake.

Monitoring Data

Transparency

The quality of Gun Club Lake was assessed in May and June 2004 by measuring transparency, a measure of water clarity, with a Secchi disk (MPCA, 2021). The transparency was 0.76 meters (2.5 feet) during both visits. More recent measurements of transparency and related indicators were obtained from the University of Minnesota (U of MN) LakeBrowser website (UofMN, 2021).

The transparency of Gun Club Lake usually meets the criteria for shallow lakes and occasionally exceeds the 2.5-meter (8.2-foot) criterion for Class 2A trout lakes in Minnesota (Statutes, 2021). It is unclear how a lake officially reported to be 2.5 feet deep could have a transparency of 8.2 feet, but the depth of floodplain lakes can vary in response to changing depths of nearby waterways.