Prior Lake History: How a Lake Town Became a Community

Every town has a story. Prior Lake’s starts with a lake, which probably isn’t surprising. But what happened between then and now is worth knowing, especially if you’re new here or thinking about making this place home.

The name on the lake

Long before anyone drew a city boundary on a map, the Dakota people knew this lake as Bde Maya Tho, meaning “Lake of the Blue Banks.” The shoreline bluffs and the blue-green hue of the water gave it that name, and if you’ve ever looked across Upper Prior from the right angle on a still morning, you can see exactly what they were describing.

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community has deep roots in this area that long predate European settlement. Their presence remains a significant part of what makes Prior Lake what it is today. The name “Mdewakanton” itself translates to “Dwellers of Spirit Lake” or “Dwellers of Mystic Lake,” which is where the casino gets its name. The community received federal recognition on November 28, 1969, with 13 adult voting members and Norman M. Crooks as their first elected Chairman. Their story here goes back centuries before that.

How “Prior” got its name

The first European land claim in the area was made by William H. Calkins in 1852, between Spring Lake and Prior Lake. Scott County was established the following year. But the lake got its modern name from Charles H. Prior, a superintendent with the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad. When the rail line pushed through in 1871, the lake near the tracks picked up his name. A post office followed in 1872 under the name “Prior Lake,” the village was platted in 1875, and the town that grew around it followed from there.

Early settlement and incorporation

European settlers started arriving in the Prior Lake area in the 1850s, drawn by fertile farmland and, naturally, the lake. The early community was agricultural. Families farmed the rolling terrain around the lake, and the town grew slowly the way most rural Minnesota communities did: a church (the Presbyterian Church went up in 1897, Prior Lake’s first), a school (College Hill School was built in 1898, red brick, grades 1 through 10), and a lot of hard winters.

Prior Lake was officially incorporated as a village on February 11, 1891. The story goes that they had to annex three surrounding farms just to meet the population requirements for incorporation. That tells you how small this place was.

The resort era

This is the part of Prior Lake’s history that surprises most people. For decades, this was a resort town.

It started with the Grainwood House in 1879, a Victorian hotel built on a point of land just north of the channel linking Upper and Lower Prior Lake. This was no modest operation. It had 150 rooms and cottages, tennis courts, sailboats, catamarans, and its own railroad station on the Hastings and Dakota line. When rail schedules were inconvenient, stagecoaches brought guests from nearby stations. The Grainwood House burned in 1894 but was immediately rebuilt, bigger and better, as the Grainwood Hotel. It operated until it burned again in 1930 and was not rebuilt.

A 1927 article in the Shakopee Argus called Prior Lake “Minnesota’s second Minnetonka” and boasted that 5-pound bass were common. The automobile age spawned a whole generation of mom-and-pop resorts from the 1920s through the 1960s. By the 1950s, 19 resorts operated on Spring and Prior Lakes.

Some of the names that old-timers still remember: Green Heights Resort (opened 1907, later became Captain Jack’s, featured seven cottages, 20 boats, and a 116-foot water slide that was dismantled in the 1930s when drought dropped lake levels). Watzl’s Resort near what’s now Lakefront Park. The Doyle Brothers Pavilion on Spring Lake, where people danced to Lawrence Welk and other big-band acts before it burned in the early 1960s. Maves Resort, The Willows, Rosie’s Rendezvous, Rau’s Resort, Schrader’s, Boudin’s Manor (Boudin Street still exists today). And yes, there was a place called The Bucket of Blood, which was exactly what it sounds like during Prohibition.

Developers got in on it too. In 1927, C.O. Hennen promoted Inguadona Beach (meaning “end of the trail” in Dakota, with lots selling for $5 a month) and Twin Isles for summer cottages. Through the 1930s and 1940s, Minneapolis and St. Paul residents built summer cabins around the lake. Some of those original cabin lots still exist today, though most have been rebuilt or remodeled into year-round homes. If you walk the older lakeshore streets, you can still see the smaller lot sizes and the occasional original foundation that hints at what this place used to look like.

The resort era ended gradually through the 1960s as property values rose and resort owners sold lakefront land for housing development. The construction of a new Highway 13 alignment in 1959-1960 accelerated the transition by making Prior Lake accessible as a commuter suburb rather than a weekend destination.

From rural to suburban

To put the growth in perspective: Prior Lake had 349 people in 1940. It had 848 in 1960. Then things started to change.

The population hit roughly 4,100 by 1970 and 7,300 by 1980. It crossed 10,000 in the mid-to-late 1980s, reached 15,000 around 1998-1999, and blew past 20,000 in the mid-2000s. The 2020 census counted 27,617 residents, and the current estimate is around 28,000. The city’s own website has a great way of putting it: in the last 75 years, Prior Lake evolved from a community of fewer than 400 people to a thriving Twin Cities suburb. Projections point toward 37,500 by 2040.

I’ve watched most of this play out firsthand. I remember when County Road 42 was still gravel. I remember goats grazing on the hill heading down to Lakefront Park. I helped Mr. Jeffers clear brush from the land where the elementary school sits now. The Jeffers Pond area? All farmland. The Wilds? Didn’t exist.

Highway 13 reshaped the town’s geography. The original route ran through downtown, but a new 50 mph bypass was built around the east side in 1959-1960, completely rerouting traffic away from the commercial center. That single decision changed the character of downtown Prior Lake in ways that are still visible today. County Road 42 was authorized and paved in the 1960s, then widened to six lanes in 2007-2008. Each road project pulled the town a little closer to the metro and pushed growth a little further out.

Key milestones

A timeline of moments that shaped the Prior Lake people know today:

1852: William H. Calkins makes the first European land claim between Spring Lake and Prior Lake.
1891: Village of Prior Lake officially incorporated (February 11).
1879-1930: The Grainwood House/Hotel era. 150 rooms, its own rail station, and the beginning of Prior Lake as a destination.
1920s-1960s: Resort era peaks with 19 resorts operating on Spring and Prior Lakes.
September 2, 1945: WWII Victory Parade through downtown.
1959-1960: Highway 13 realigned to bypass downtown Prior Lake, reshaping the commercial district.
1960: Prior Lake American newspaper begins publishing (still in publication).
Late 1960s: Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools (ISD 719) established, uniting the two communities under a shared school district. Prior Lake High School opens around 1968. Before this, Prior Lake students attended high school in either Shakopee or Farmington.
1969: Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community receives federal recognition.
Early 1970s: City acquires the former Watzl’s Resort property and develops Lakefront Park.
1982: Little Six Bingo Palace opens on the SMSC reservation. First tribal gaming operation in Minnesota, launched in six trailers on the 250-acre reservation.
1992: Mystic Lake Casino opens (May 12), eventually growing into the largest casino in Minnesota with 4,000+ slot machines, 766 hotel rooms, and approximately 4,100 employees. The SMSC is now Scott County’s largest employer.
Mid-1990s: Major improvements to Lakefront Park.
2003: Current Prior Lake High School opens in Savage.
2010: First Lakefront Music Fest (originally called the Lakefront Jazz & Blues Festival), organized by the Prior Lake Rotary Club. Expanded to two nights in 2012 and has grown to 32,000+ attendees.
2013: Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools earns U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon recognition for the K-12 E-STEM program.
2017: $109 million school bond referendum passes.
2020: Hamilton Ridge Elementary opens. Laker Activity Center opens at PLHS.

The lake as the constant

Everything else has changed. The farms became subdivisions. The gravel roads became county highways. The cabins became year-round homes. The one-room schools became a district with 13 buildings and 8,700+ students. The 150-room Victorian hotel is a memory, and the water slide at Green Heights Resort is long gone.

But the lake is still the lake. Upper Prior and Lower Prior together cover 1,340 acres and 21 miles of shoreline. People still fish the same spots, swim at the same beaches, and watch the same sunsets their grandparents did. The annual rhythms of ice-out in spring and freeze-up in fall still set the pace of life here in a way that’s hard to explain until you’ve lived through a full cycle.

That’s probably the best way to understand Prior Lake’s history. It started as a lake that people gathered around, and it still is. The gathering just got bigger.

Keep exploring

Thinking about making the move? I’ve been here 40 years and selling homes here for 22. Happy to answer questions, no strings attached: mark@priorlakeevents.com

Curious how the market looks today? I track real-time MLS data at PriorLake.RealEstate.

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