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Minnesota Tales

The Stillwater Messenger, September 26, 1917, p. 1

Interesting Legend About Lake Elmo.

M. P. Malone tells an interesting legend explaining how Lake Elmo came to be named. He was in a second hand book shop in St. Paul a few years ago and ran across a book containing Indian history. Turning it over he ran onto a page telling about Lake Elmo, and as he knew the lake, he was interested and read the article. The exact particulars are not exactly clear in his mind but in effect the story is this:

Two Indian tribes were at war. They were the Sioux and the Chippewas, and one camp was evidently located on what is now known as Dr. Stevens' point, and the other tribe were located in Happy Hollow. It so happened that a Sioux Indian girl was in love with a Chippewa buck, and in order to warn her lover and save him from possible death, she swam across Lake Elmo to warn him and his tribe that the Sioux were about to attack them. She swam the river in the night but her treachery was discovered the first thing the next morning. She was killed and that night her body was taken out into the lake and sunk there.

Her name was El Mona, and this gave the lake its name, Elmo, and the legend ran that on stilly nights one can hear her "moaning."

The book, Minnesota Geographic Names, by Warren Upham states the following about the origin of the name of Lake Elmo: Lake Elmo "was formerly called Bass Lake but was renamed Lake Elmo in 1879 by Alpheus B. Stickney, of St. Paul, 'from the novel, St. Elmo.'"

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