Minnesota is known as the ‘Land of 10,000 Lakes’. This endonym, countless livelihoods, endless enjoyment, and occasional treachery and controversy are the result of Minnesota’s vast expanse of frozen and flowing bodies of water. The effect that water has on land is incalculable in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. 

County ditches litter the landscape and serve as a geo-political, cultural, and economic symbol of water’s effect on land. Like most land use decisions, they blend into the landscape, they become the landscape.