Moose Lake, Minnesota — Gateway to the Arrowhead & Home of Beaver Roofing

The land that is now Moose Lake, Minnesota was originally the territory of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) people, who hunted, fished, and gathered wild rice across the lakes and forests of what would become Carlton County. Archaeological surveys documented as many as 13 Native American burial mounds in the area, some believed to date between 500 B.C. and 700 A.D. — evidence of centuries of indigenous habitation along Moosehead Lake and the Moosehorn River.

Following the Ojibwe land cession treaty of 1854, Scandinavian settlers — primarily from Norway and Sweden — began arriving in the late 1860s. Ole Amundson is credited with establishing the first permanent home on the eastern shore of nearby Sturgeon Lake. The completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1870 between Saint Paul and Duluth transformed the settlement into a logging and commerce hub, with a large sawmill built on the shore of Moosehead Lake in 1874.

The Village of Moose Lake was officially incorporated on February 15, 1889. By 1910, the Soo Line Railroad completed its Moose Lake connection, and the historic Soo Line Depot — built in 1907 and still standing today at 900 Folz Blvd — became the heart of the community. Everything changed on October 12, 1918, when the catastrophic Cloquet–Moose Lake Fire swept through 390 square miles, killed 453 people, and nearly destroyed the town. It remains Minnesota’s worst single-day natural disaster and the second-largest fire tragedy in American history.

Moose Lake rebuilt with extraordinary determination. Today, it serves as a regional medical, educational, and recreational hub along Interstate 35, roughly 40 miles south of Duluth and 100 miles north of the Twin Cities — and it’s where Beaver Roofing, Inc. proudly calls home.