Do you know of Otter Lake ???

This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Otter Lake. When we encounter a name that is new to us, we add it to our Gazetteer with the hope that we'll discover more information in the future. Such is the case with Otter Lake.<1>

We found mention of Otter Lake as a post office (see Mentions and References below), but can't determine its location - other than being located somewhere in Pottawatomie County, Kansas.

It's common that the post office is named the same as the community in which it's located (although that's not always case). In this case, we can't match this post office to any of the existing communities in our gazetteer.<2>

From the Blevins / Hellbock List: The post office opened in 1870 and closed in 1886.

Communities Also Named Otter Lake ...

We found seven communities that share the name Otter Lake.

Within Kansas, the name Otter Lake is unique.

Beyond Kansas, we know of another seven communities that are located throughout in the United States and Canada. Of these seven communities, three are located in the United States and four are in Canada.

Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
- Indiana
  - Steuben County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<3> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Indiana community of Otter Lake [Steuben County].
- Manitoba
  - Please visit our profile page for the Manitoba community of Otter Lake.
- Michigan
  - Lapeer County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Michigan community of Otter Lake [Lapeer County].
- New York
  - Oneida County
  - Please visit our profile page for the New York community of Otter Lake [Oneida County].
- Nova Scotia
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<3> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Nova Scotia community of Otter Lake.
- Ontario
  - Please visit our profile page for the Ontario community of Otter Lake.
- Quebec
  - Please visit our profile page for the Quebec community of Otter Lake.

Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Otter Lake ...

We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about Otter Lake:

Found in a comprehensive list of Post Offices that was created by Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<4>

List of Post Offices in the United States (1870)
Published by the Government Printing Office

More Orphans in Pottawatomie County ...

Can you help?

As we explained above, when we encounter a name that might be a community or a post office we add it to our Gazetteer. If we have little information to go with the name, we call them Orphans. Below are Orphans that we believe to be located in Pottawatomie County.

Footnotes ...

<1>	This entry could have originated in error. It might be that a source had a misprint, was simply wrong or we made a transcription error while referencing it. Many of the documents we reference are from the 1800s and the early 1900s, with some easier to read than others.
<2>	Part of the difficulty in identifying whether a name is a post office or a community lies with how Post Offices were named. We've prepared an article with our understanding of how post offices were named: Naming of Post Offices.
<3>	If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer as a placeholder. As we find more information about that community, it will be added to our Gazetteer. Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Rock Creek to see Pete ... Rock Creek is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name. Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time. Also keep in mind that Otter Lake could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.
<4>	A copy of their list with background information can be found at: https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/