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St. Louis County lake depth maps

147 lakes in St. Louis County, Minnesota, have survey depth contours in TopoStack. Open one in the studio to make a layered wooden lake map or a flat engraving.

Minnesota DNR publishes depth contours surveyed for thousands of the state’s lakes, from small kettle lakes to Mille Lacs and Lake Minnetonka. TopoStack interpolates between the surveyed contours to build a lake floor you can cut as layers.

Larger lakes link to a page with their survey facts and sizes; the studio link beside them, and every other lake name, opens the studio framed to that lake’s survey area and generates its terrain. You can also search every surveyed lake or browse other regions.

Largest survey areas

Lakes with surveyed depth data

Make a lake map from this data

  1. Open a lake in the studio from the list. The studio frames its survey area, turns on Water depth and generates the terrain. Widen the frame and regenerate if you want more shoreline.
  2. Check the warnings above the preview. The studio warns when survey coverage is partial or depths are estimated; how lake depths work explains why.
  3. Enter your sheet thickness in Terrain layers; the studio works out the layer count. If a deep lake needs more sheets than you want, Fit depth compresses it while keeping the shoreline. The custom lake map guide walks through the whole build.
  4. Turn on paint templates to spray only the water on each layer, and split the map if it is bigger than your laser bed.
  5. Export the SVG layers. The download’s ATTRIBUTION.txt credits the survey used.

Data source

  • Minnesota DNR lake bathymetry: survey contours. Minnesota DNR General Geographic Data License; survey contours interpolated by TopoStack. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/sitetools/data_software_license.html

Survey dates and water levels vary between lakes, and a listing can cover only part of a lake. See sources and attribution for credits.

Continue your project

Explore the Lake Tahoe example

Open a prepared lake project and learn why its framing and depth settings were chosen.

Follow the Crater Lake project

See a software preview and a worked setup with surveyed lake-floor data.

Take your SVG into LightBurn

Check dimensions, processing layers and kerf before running the job.

Create a topographic map