Brainerd Lakes Map Art

The Brainerd Lakes Area is the name for Crow Wing County and parts of the counties around it in central Minnesota. More than 460 lakes lie within 25 miles of the city of Brainerd, mostly to the north toward Nisswa, which is why so many families keep summer cabins here. Brainerd itself is the county seat. It straddles the Mississippi River a few miles above where the Crow Wing River joins it, and it began as the place the Northern Pacific railroad chose to cross the river. Zebulon Pike passed here on Christmas Day in 1805 while searching for the headwaters of the Mississippi. In 1870 the railroad's president, John Gregory Smith, named the township after his wife, Anne Eliza Brainerd Smith. The city had 14,395 people in 2020, and the area also hosts the summer Lakes Area Music Festival.