The name "La Ronge" comes from the lake itself, although the actual origin of the name is uncertain. The
French verb
ronger translates as "to gnaw", with at least one explanation theorising that 17th- and 18th-century
French fur traders referred to the lake as
la ronge (literally,
the chewed) due to the abundant
beaver population along the lake’s shoreline. Undoubtedly, many of the trees along the water’s edge would have been visibly chewed, or completely gnawed to the ground and taken away by the
rodents for their
dam construction. In 1782,{{cite web La Ronge began in 1904 as a fur
trading post and meeting place, but with the decline of hunting and the fur market, La Ronge has diversified into other areas. Many of the
Dene,
Cree, and white trappers used La Ronge as their central service point. It incorporated as a
northern village on 3 May 1905. With the extension of
Highway 2 from Prince Albert in 1947, La Ronge became a major tourist
fishing area. The
highway between La Ronge and Prince Albert expanded the community further in the 1970s after it was paved. In the early 1950s and 1960s, the
mineral resources in the La Ronge area began to be explored and developed. La Ronge's status changed from northern village to industrial town in 1965 and then to town on 1 November 1976 before finally becoming a northern town on 1 October 1983.
Wildfire evacuations In May 1999, the community of La Ronge was evacuated after a fire burned through the far north of the town. The
wildfire burned multiple houses before conditions pushed the fire away from the town and crews were able to extinguish it. Once again in July 2015, La Ronge was threatened by dangerous forest fires that combined forcing approximately 7,000 people to evacuate from their homes. Many cabins and homes were burnt. The fire came within 2 km of La Ronge and burned completely around the La Ronge Airport making it difficult to fight the fire from air with smokey conditions and unreliable weather making the fight against the fires very difficult. In total there were over a hundred fires burning in Northern Saskatchewan at once which forced over 13,000 residents to flee their homes, resulting in the province's largest evacuation ever. The fires were caused by low precipitation in the winter and summer months and also high temperatures. {{cite web == Geography ==