Proglacial lakes of Minnesota

As the Laurentide Ice Sheet decayed at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, lakes were created in depressions or behind moraines left by the glaciers.

[1] Not all contemporaneous, these glacial lakes drained after the retreat of the lobes of the ice sheets that blocked their outlets, or whose meltwaters fed them.

[6] Glacial Lake Upham was formed in the wake of the retreat of the St. Louis Sublobe of the Des Moines Lobe.

[7] It occupied a broad lowland along the valley of the present-day Mississippi River between Grand Rapids and Aitkin in north central Minnesota.

[9] It is also a source for reed-sedge peat, which is harvested, processed, and packaged for agricultural applications; it enables plants to fix nitrogen and thereby reduces the need for fertilizer.

Cloud east-northeast to Grantsburg, Wisconsin, whence its outflow ran south along the east front of the ice sheet down the valley of the Saint Croix River.