2. The village of Sturgeon Lake was platted in 1889 by the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad, for a little community had already begun to grow up around the railroad's depot. The town was officially incorporated on April 5, 1901.
3. Sturgeon Lake's first school term was taught by Marilla Ada Griffith in 1889. Mr. Murray, who owned the general store and served as postmaster, organized the term. Classes were held in an empty coke storage room (coke is a by-product of coal). The sixteen students sat at a long table, boys on one side and girls on the other. A barn door, painted black, was used for a blackboard.
4. The Sturgeon Lake village school, also called the Wilson School, was organized officially on May 8, 1900.
5. St. Isidore's Catholic Church was established and built in 1893. Prior to this, there were no churches in Sturgeon Lake, so residents used the depot as a funeral chapel.
6. By 1909, Surgeon Lake was home to 175 people. There were three hundred residents by 1918.
7. Sturgeon Lake businesses in the 1910s included four general stores, a blacksmith and wagon shop, two produce buyers, a lumber yard, a planing mill, a restaurant with an ice cream parlor, a garage, a farm implement dealer, five sawmills, a life insurance agency, a saloon, a hotel, and the Sturgeon Lake State Bank.
8. The Sturgeon Lake Hustler newspaper was published from 1914 through 1917.
9. On May 5, 1915, St. Isidore's Catholic Church was destroyed by fire, but parishioners managed to save most of the furnishings. The congregation immediately began to rebuild and dedicated their new church in September of 1916.
10. The 1918 forest fire burned rural areas around Sturgeon Lake but did no damage in the village itself.
Sources: Pine County...and Its Memories by Jim Cordes; One Hundred Years in Pine County
St. Isidore's Catholic Church, built 1893
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