Which State Has More Lakes, Minnesota Or Wisconsin?

Ask a Minnesotan how many lakes are in the state, and you'll almost certainly hear "10,000." Ask a Wisconsinite the same question about their state, and the answer might even be bigger.

So which state actually has more lakes?

Short answer: Minnesota has more lakes than Wisconsin.

That's according to Cory McDonald, a research scientist at the Wisconsin DNR, who studied the question directly and found "in comparison with Minnesota, Wisconsin clearly contains fewer lakes, regardless of size criteria applied."

So why the debate?

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources puts the state's official lake count at 11,842, using a threshold of 10 acres or larger. That's already well above the "10,000" in the state's famous nickname.

Across the border, the Wisconsin DNR says the Badger State is home to roughly 15,000 lakes, a figure the agency has used for years in its own materials and outreach.

On paper, that settles it. Wisconsin wins by a wide margin, more than 3,000 lakes ahead of Minnesota.

Except there's a catch, and it comes down to how each state defines a lake in the first place.

Minnesota only counts bodies of water 10 acres or larger.

Wisconsin counts lakes as small as two acres, a much lower bar that sweeps in thousands of small ponds Minnesota wouldn't count at all.

A Wisconsin DNR research scientist even published a paper examining this exact question, noting there's no universally agreed-upon definition of a lake and that the size cutoff chosen dramatically changes the final count.

Apply Minnesota's stricter 10-acre standard to Wisconsin's map, and the Badger State's lake count drops to well under 6,000, putting Minnesota comfortably ahead.

Both states are using accurate numbers under their own rules. The disagreement isn't about counting; it's about what counts.

One state's totals nobody disputes: Alaska. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates the state has about 3 million lakes larger than 5 acres, a tighter standard than Wisconsin's and still enough to make both Minnesota and Wisconsin look small by comparison.

Alaska is roughly 8 times the size of Minnesota and 10 times the size of Wisconsin, but its lake count outnumbers both states by more than 200 to 1, a gap far too large to explain by land area alone.