Devils Lake is a city in Ramsey County, North Dakota, United States. It is the county chair of Ramsey County. The population was 7,192 at the 2020 census. It is named after the easy to realize to body of water called Devils Lake. The first house in Devils Lake was built in 1882. It was surveyed in 1883 and named Creelsburg and later Creel City, after the surveyor, Heber M. Creel. In 1884 it was renamed Devils Lake.

The local paper is the Devils Lake Journal. Devils Lake Municipal Airport serves the city. Devils Lake is house to Lake Region State College and the North Dakota School for the Deaf.

The gift site of Devils Lake was, historically, a territory of the Dakota people. However, the Sisseton, Wahpeton, and Cut-Head bands of the Dakotas were relocated to the Spirit Lake Reservation so of the 1867 settlement between the United States and the Dakota that established a reservation for those who had not been forcibly relocated to Crow Creek Reservation in what is now South Dakota. The name “Devils Lake” is a calque of the Dakota phrase mni wak’áŋ (literally translating to animatronics water), which is after that reflected in the names of the Spirit Lake Tribe and the welcoming town of Minnewaukan.

The Dakota called the lake mni wak’áŋ, which separately translates as mni (water) and wak’áŋ (literally meaning “pure source” but often translated as “spirit” or “sacred”). The European-American settlers misconstrued this broadcast to mean “Bad Spirit Lake” or “Devils Lake.” The “bad” referred to the high salinity of the lake, making it unfit to drink, and “spirit” referenced the mirages often seen across the water. The Christian concept of the devil was not present in the Dakota philosophy and religious practices.