Pelican Lake

Pelican Lake is an 11,546-acre lake in St. Louis County in northeastern Minnesota. It lies beside the city of Orr, and its surface sits about 1,289 feet above sea level. The U.S. Geological Survey runs a monitoring station called Pelican Lake at Orr. It classes the water as a lake, reservoir or impoundment in the Vermilion River subbasin. National Inventory of Dams data list a dam on the Pelican River, owned by St. Louis County, that holds the lake at its level. The lake has a maximum recorded depth of 38 feet. Its 54 miles of shoreline wind around more than 50 islands.

Six public water access sites with ramps serve the lake. St. Louis County runs three of them: the Co Rd 516, Co Rd 515 and Pelican Lake (NE) accesses. The City of Orr runs the Orr Public Water Access Site. The Minnesota DNR Division of Parks and Trails runs the Saunders Bay access near Glendale and the Pelican Lake (W) access.

Pelican Lake is known as a fishing lake for bluegill, largemouth and smallmouth bass, walleye, crappie, northern pike and perch, and it is also fished through the ice in winter. Resorts have operated on its shores since the early 1900s.