Homer Lake
Tofte Ranger District
HOMER LAKE CAMPSITES:
None visited yet.
The access to this lake is on its very eastern end. The eastern two-thirds of Homer Lake lies outside of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), therefore motorboats are sometimes seen.
There are three campsites on Homer Lake. Two of these campsites are outside of the BWCA on the lakes south shoreline. As such, you can camp at these sites without a BWCA permit. There is one other campsite on the west end of the lake within the BWCA.
Homer Lake provides very few route options. It would be a good entry point to turn to if you want to avoid the long paddle across big Brule Lake, or if all the permits for that lake are taken. From Homer Lake, you can portage south into the "smoke" lakes. These lakes are all named after smoking paraphenalia; pipe, stem, tobacco. The portage from Homer Lake is into the Vern River and then another short portage into East Pipe Lake. Another quick portage west gets you into Pipe Lake. The other way out of Homer Lake is a six rod portage into Whack Lake followed up by a 14 rod portage into "V" shaped Vern Lake. From Vern Lake you can paddle up its long northwestern arm and portage to Juno Lake and then access Brule Lake from Juno Lake's far eastern end (backtracking a bit). That's it, there are really no other route options unless you have a taste for bushwhacking. Vern Lake and Juno Lake are long, narrow lakes which make for scenic paddling. Exploring up the Vern River may be interesting too.
The forest around the west end of Homer Lake experienced quite a bit of blowdown from a windstorm in 1986. The June 1996 fire that consumed about 4,750 acres and started near South Temperance Lake, came very close to Homer Lake (Beymer, 2006).
The lake is possibly named for Harry Homer, Sr. from Ely, Minnesota, a prolific logger of this area in the 1940's.
References:
Beymer, Robert, Boundary Waters Canoe Area – Volume 2 – Eastern Region (Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 2006), 73, 75, 77.
Pauly, Daniel, Exploring the Boundary Waters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 265.
Exploring Homer Lake
View of Homer Lake from BWCA Entry Point 40
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VIEW OF HOMER LAKE FROM BWCA ENTRY POINT 40
Looking west from the far eastern end of Homer Lake. View from the canoe landing.
Route Connections for Homer Lake
From Homer Lake, you can portage to Star Lake (across the road) or Whack Lake. You can also bushwhack to Axe Lake. Also, Homer Lake is the location of BWCA Entry Point 40.
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