Holman I. Pearl Sites

In 1938, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) decided to diverge the Long Prairie River to address issues that were both economic and community-driven. Long Prairie and Osakis are two small, rural, farming communities in Minnesota less than 30 minutes from one another. One community, Osakis, was supported through its tourist economy, while its sister community’s lifeblood was its farmers. A lake in and around the community of Osakis, Osakis Lake, and it was suffering to the point it was “nearly useless”, according to the newspapers written at the time (cited and pictured on this page). Lake Osakis was in desperate...