LAKE OF THE WOODS COUNTY, Minn. — Just a few years into his career as a Department of Natural Resources forester, Bill Lockner got assigned to map a stretch of northern Minnesota for a timber sale in the Beltrami Island State Forest.

He decided to have a little fun with it.

On a map of the area, he sketched the outline of Minnesota. Then using only a compass and hand tools — it was 1987, years before Google Earth and satellite mapping — Lockner calculated the angles and distances to transfer the state’s shape onto the landscape.

Retired Department of Natural Resources employee Bill Lockner created a state-shaped forest in northern Minnesota in 1987. This is the original timber sale he set up. The state shape is still visible from the air. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources)

The harvested jack pine trees eventually brought in $2,365. More importantly, the tree cutting left the exposed terrain expertly shaped into a stark white outline of Minnesota, the start of what’s now lauded as an iconic state landmark in Lake of the Woods County.

“I decided to do something different on this spot, just because it doesn’t matter where the lines are, and I just decided to do it,” Lockner told MPR News recently at his home in Baudette. “I didn’t have a real reason.”

He wasn’t sure how the DNR bosses in St. Paul would react when they first saw his plan for a Minnesota-shaped timber sale. He also contemplated a second option — creating a sale in the land outline of a loon. He decided not to push his luck.

“I didn’t think they’d be bothered by it,” Lockner said of the Minnesota shape. “No one is going to see it, except for pilots,” he said with a chuckle. “Google Earth hadn’t been invented yet.”

“The (local) supervisor called me, and he just mentioned briefly, ‘You made a sale shaped like Minnesota.’ I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’ Then it went to St. Paul. They sent back some sort of notice to the Baudette supervisor to tell me not to do that anymore and not to waste my time doing that. He transferred the message to me.”

That was that. Lockner headed into the woods with his compass, a measuring tool called a hip chain and a paper with 23 angle and distance calculations.

He used a black-and-white aerial photo to get his bearings.

“I decided to start in Duluth,” he said, “because it’s a nice, sharp corner on the state, a known point.”

He picked a birch tree easily visible among the dominant jack pine to represent Duluth, and started walking up the north shore on his mini-Minnesota.

He typically painted trees as he laid out a timber sale, giving loggers an easy way to see the boundaries. On the curved parts of Minnesota, he tied ribbons to trees.

“I thought, what if I don’t end up back in Duluth?” he said. “I could at least adjust these ribbons and it would look better.”

But after he made his way around the 1-mile perimeter of the state-shaped forest, he returned to the Duluth birch right on target.

He watched the clock lest a supervisor blame him for wasting time. The layout took four hours.

The logging came about 18 months later. A few years after that, he planted red pine, turning the state shape dark green. Later, the trees around the Minnesota shape were logged, again bringing the state into sharp contrast.

Only a few pilots noticed at first until Google Earth launched in 2001 and a satellite photo of the state-shaped forest went viral.

Retired Department of Natural Resources employee Bill Lockner created a state-shaped forest in northern Minnesota in 1987. This photo from 1990 shows the shape shortly after trees were logged. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources)

Lockner still remembers reading some of the comments, including one that hit close to home.

“Sometimes I sit on the couch with potato chips and I very carefully nibble on the potato chips to make shapes of animals or states,” the online commenter said. “And I get it as perfect as I can.”

“I thought, you know, that’s really what I was doing,” Lockner said with a hearty laugh.

Now 71, Lockner describes his 37-year DNR forestry job as amazing. “I thought, geez, they’re paying me for this. I’d almost do this for free. I just love maps.”

He refused to have his photo taken for this story, saying, “I don’t want to be famous. I just wanted to do something cool.”

“I kind of just did it, maybe for me or in honor of the state, because I like this job. And I guess that was why I was a little creative one day. You know, I tried to conform to the state principles, but I liked it so much I had to do one of Minnesota. I’m sorry, but I did.”

The red pines Lockner planted will reach their prime in about a century, so the shape will live on long after he’s gone.

Years after the famous timber sale, Lockner remembered sitting in a DNR training session listening to a motivational speaker urging staffers to “don’t just do your job. Add something that you can be proud of when you leave. And I leaned over to the guy next to me and said, ‘I think I already did that.’”

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