Mirik is a small town and a Notified Area of Darjeeling district in the state of West Bengal, India.

The name Mirik comes from the Lepcha words Mir-Yok meaning "place burnt by fire".

Mirik Bazar began a commercial centre of the region where people from the surrounding villages and tea gardens came to trade and buy their necessities.

The present lake area was a marshland with thick growth of sweet flag (Acorus calamus, locally called bojho).

In 1969, the West Bengal tourism department began the process of acquiring 335 acres of land from the neighboring Thurbo tea estate.

The work of developing this land into a tourist spot began in 1974 when Siddhartha Shankar Ray was the chief minister of West Bengal.

The tourist spot, which included the newly built lake and the Day Centre, was inaugurated by the next chief minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, in April 1979.

With the flourishing of tourism, Krishnanagar developed on the other end of the lake with hotels and restaurants catering to tourists.

The centre of all attraction is Sumendu Lake, surrounded by a garden named Savitri Pushpaudyan (after Savitri Thapa, a martyr soldier of INA) on one side and pine trees on the other, linked together by an arching footbridge called Indreni Pool (named after Indreni Thapa, a martyr soldier of INA).

The 2011 Census of India recorded a population of 11,513 in Mirik Notified Area (i.e., urban unit).

The urban hub at Mirik is administered by a Municipality/Notified Area with nine wards while the outlying rural villages are taken care of by Mirik community development block, which has six Gram Panchayats: Chenga Panighata, Pahilagaon School Dara–I, Pahilagaon School Dara–II, Soureni–I, Soureni–II and Duptin.

Shared taxis operate from Mirik to Siliguri, Darjeeling, Kurseong, Kakarbhitta (Nepal), Sonada, and Kalimpong.

The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration operates a motel at a hilltop near the helipad at Ahalay and another tourist lodge located near the lake.

There are also many home stays that have started sprouting in the region owing to the large number of tourists who flock in.