Windigo Lake is 529.6 acres (2.143 km2) in size (including islands) with a maximum depth of 51 feet (16 m) and a shoreline of 9 miles (14 km).

[2] Windigo Lake is approximately six miles south of the city of Hayward, the primary commercial and retail center of the area.

[4] Captain James Allen who accompanied Schoolcraft on an expedition in the following year (1832) to the source of the Mississippi River produced a detailed map of the northern Minnesota/Wisconsin area after that trip.

The first known visit by Europeans to the area was around 1659 when Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers traveled from Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior southward through the area and stayed for a period at an Indian village that has been identified as being located on nearby Lac Courte Oreilles.

A later explorer, Jonathan Carver, passed through the area in 1767 and traveled through what the editor identifies as Windigo Lake on June 29, 1767, on his way from the Indian village on Lac Courte Oreilles to the Namekagon River.