Minnesota's 50 Best Towns: #40-31
The other night, I profiled the first 10 communities ranked among my 50 favorite in Minnesota based on my years of visiting all 734 incorporated communities in the state. Today, I'll hit the next batch of 10. Again, there's some choices among these that some will consider oddball. But maybe that will inspire others to make their own list.
#40. Granite Falls (Yellow Medicine and Chippewa Counties, est. pop. 3,000). The Minnesota River Valley is the source of many of the towns on my list, and Granite Falls is yet another, nestled into a scenic valley in west-central Minnesota about a half hour east of the South Dakota border. There are two particularly scenic drives leading to Granite Falls, including the journey northward on State Highway 23 where the cozy-looking town in the valley can be admired from afar. Even better is the 10-mile northbound stretch on State Highway 67 leading into town parallel to the windy river through the Upper Sioux Agency Indian Reservation lying just to the southeast of the city (regrettably the location of some unseemly tactics by the government waged against the native population in the 19th century). Granite Falls’ scenic location has been a source of despair lately, with recurrent flooding of the Minnesota River forcing engineers to move large sections of the city to higher ground. I have not been to Granite Falls since 2004, so I haven’t seen the changes since this experiment was reportedly undertaken. Politically, it’s a working-class town with a staunch DFL pedigree, even by west-central Minnesota standards, almost always going Democrat by a margin of two-to-one or better. I used to work in the newspaper business in southern Minnesota and was always impressed by the progressive editorials that always came out of the Granite Falls newspaper earlier this decade.
#39. Barnum (Carlton County, est. pop. 500). There are no shortage of cool towns in Carlton County, just south of Duluth, and one of the coolest is Barnum. My first encounter with Barnum came 16 years ago when my family stopped at a Happy Chef restaurant for breakfast off of I-35 en route to Duluth. The restaurant was built into a hill with a perfect vantage point of the freeway and, at the crest of the hill on the east side of I-35, Bear Lake and the dense north woods surrounding it. The community of Barnum, atop the hill on the other side of the restaurant, is very nice itself, but it’s that contrasting altitude and killer view that is seared into my mind. The restaurant atop the hill near the freeway is no longer a Happy Chef, but perhaps I’ll make another visit anyway one of these next years I drive past.
#38. Lake City (Wabasha and Goodhue Counties, est. pop. 4,500). The landscape of “bluff country” in Minnesota’s southeastern corner lends itself to some of the most beautiful small town settings in the Midwest. Resting on the banks of the Mississippi River about two hours southeast of the Twin Cities, Lake City features a geographic anomaly I don’t quite understand….a lake within a river. The lake in question is Lake Pepin, which expands the Mississippi between Minnesota and Wisconsin substantially for several miles. There’s no such thing as a bad time of year to visit Lake City, but I was most impressed driving along the lake shore in the summer, due to the prevalence of sailboats cast off on the lake in the warm weather. There’s not much of a sailboat culture in southern Minnesota, so seeing them en masse off the combined shores of Lake Pepin and the Mississippi gives Lake City some undeniable atmosphere. Lake City is a swing town politically, but seems to vote for Democrats significantly more than Republicans.
#37. St. James (Watonwan County, est. pop. 5,000). This is the town in my top-50 that I have the most personal connection with as I lived there for three years, working at the community’s local newspaper. But that wasn’t my first St. James experience. Of all the southern Minnesota towns where I helped my dad with vinyl repair work at car lots as a boy, St. James yielded some of my fondest memories (and ironically, one of the car salesmen we dealt with would turn out to be my boss 12 years later). Encountering a wide variety of personalities in this business, both my dad and I were struck by how friendly everybody seemed to be in St. James. This perception stuck with me as a young adult dealing with the locals on a daily basis in a job that doesn’t always generate goodwill. The welcoming mood of the community has really been put to the test in the last 20 years as the Latino population has exploded to around 30% of the town. While the community may not necessarily be integrated with perfect harmony, relations between the long-time residents and the Hispanics are better there than in any of the other small towns I’ve observed that have gone under a similar transition. Aesthetically, there is also an abundance of historic homes in the city, the scenic St. James Lake on the west side of town, and is surrounded by miles and miles of cornfields and Norman Rockwell-esque rural homesteads. Politically, the town has always leaned Democratic, but is trending slightly more so with the influx of Latinos, even though turnout among Latino voters is usually microscopic.
#36. Kennedy (Kittson County, est. pop. 250). For those not familiar with the “Red River Valley” dividing northwestern Minnesota and North Dakota, the land is said to be the flattest on the planet, so flat that you can see the curvature of the earth. I’ve put on hundreds of miles in the Red River Valley, and Kennedy in Minnesota’s northwesternmost county, serves up the best vantage point of the entire region’s fabled “horizontal grandeur”. Particularly with the depopulated rural regions of Kittson County (one township near Kennedy recently became the only township in the state with a population of zero), one can exit the town from any direction and see nothing but uninterrupted fields full of wheat and sugar beets on the horizon. Kennedy’s name indicates it’s an Irish settlement in a county that has the highest percentage of Swedes in the entire country, but the difference is negligible politically. Even though most of the Red River Valley had a weakness for George Bush in the last two Presidential elections, Kennedy still went for Gore and Kerry by landslide margins as it routinely does for all DFL candidates. Particularly telling is that 2006 GOP Senate candidate Mark Kennedy received less than 25% of the vote in the community that shares his name.
#35. Carlton (Carlton County, est. pop. 900). I mentioned just four towns ago that Carlton County south of Duluth is chock full of cool towns, and for me the coolest is the county’s namesake. Even though there are three towns in Carlton County larger, Carlton is the county seat and thus home to the courthouse and county offices. But the most memorable features of the town can be found just west and east of its city limits. On the east side is a bridge that runs parallel to the picturesque Thomson Reservoir and Dam. An even bigger treat to the senses can be found just west of Carlton, where a loading area for the nearby railroad runs parallel to the highway, with mountains of freshly cut pine logs, likely waiting for their final transport to the paper mill five miles up the road in Cloquet. There is usually not a single precinct, city or township, in Carlton County that votes Republican, and the city of Carlton is no exception, usually going for DFL candidates by margins of 3-1 or better.
#34. Balaton (Lyon County, est. pop. 600). Most people just don’t dig southwestern Minnesota from an aesthetic attraction angle, but as is so often the case, I’m the outlier. But even if one can’t get into the windswept prairies and storybook farm landscapes that dot the region, some of the towns have some real character. Balaton is one such example, particularly if one heads into the community from the east on U.S. Highway 14, otherwise known as Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway (for the record, Balaton is two towns west of Walnut Grove, setting of the “Little House on the Prairie” television and literary franchise). Scenic Lake Yankton rests along Balaton’s eastern edge and the banks of the lake along the highway are lined with the unusual pink quartzite rock so abundant in southwestern Minnesota. Driving into town, the setting from the highway is very cool, with the road sloping up and curving around the town resting on a hill to the south. Continuing westward from there, the first remnants of the Buffalo Ridge and the hundreds of wind turbines resting atop the ridge can be seen. Not everybody’s cup of tea, but I have managed to convert a few people into fans of the region by directing them to the right towns and roads. Balaton is about as swingy of a town as they come politically, usually going Democrat on Democratic years and Republican on Republican years.
#33. Houston (Houston County, est. pop. 1,000). I already made passing reference to the wildly impressive rural towns that lie in the valley of the Mississippi River bluffs in Minnesota’s southeastern corner that loo more like New England than the Midwest, but haven’t specifically mentioned the Root River Valley that runs along State Highway 16 en route to La Crosse, Wisconsin, arguably the best kept secret of Minnesota during peak fall color season. Every October, I make a point of making the journey, and one of my favorite towns on the route is Houston, which rests in a broad valley and provides visitors an exceptional vantage point of the bluffs on all sides of the community. If one is really adventurous, the backroads near Houston present some truly amazing eye candy, and I stumbled upon one remote home in rural Houston that looks identical to a painting at my parent’s house of a farm house in bluff country during harvest time. Houston County’s long-standing Republican politics have come a long way in just the past two or three election cycles, and part of the transition is likely related to the growth of organic farming, which is perfectly suited for the county’s hillsides which are not accommodating to larger-scale farming operations. In short, the region seems to have become just a little more “granola” than it was in previous generations. However, the city of Houston itself, settled by conservative Germans, continues to lean fairly comfortably Republican.
#32 Whalan (Fillmore County, est. pop. 60). One town down the list from Houston is a much tinier community that also rests along the banks of the Root River in southeastern Minnesota bluff country, less than an hour west of Houston. Whalan is the smallest town in my top-50, and what makes it specifically unique is its location on a teardrop-shaped peninsula of land almost completely encircled by the Root River, with one bridge crossing the river into the community of less than 40 homes. This "moat" effect of river water surrounding more than 80% of the town would seem ominous in terms of flooding, but the land seems to hover high enough above the river to where flooding doesn't seem to be a problem, even last August when southeast Minnesota was devasted by 17 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. The people of Whalan also seem to have a sense of humor, making the national news about 10 years ago for the annual tradition of an immobile parade on Main Street, where the people walk past the parade floats instead of vice versa since the town doesn't have enough streets to accommodate a traditional moving parade. Whalan is only a couple miles east of Lanesboro, another beautiful community in bluff country with a significant Amish presence. While Lanesboro is a fantastic town, it's become a little touristy for my taste, overflowing with visitors every weekend to the point that the equally beautiful landscape yet much sparser traffic density of neighboring Whalan is much more appealing to me. Politically, a handful of voters who have a change of heart can create a massive localized shift in a town this small, but with that said, I don't ever recall an election where Democrats haven't reined victorious among the few dozen voters of Whalan.
#31. Duluth (St. Louis County, est. pop. 86,000) Even those who are unfamiliar with nearly every other town on this list are certain to be familiar with Duluth, the population center of northern Minnesota and one of the most unique-looking cities in the country, located on a hill on the western edge of Lake Superior. I attended the Minnesota DFL convention in downtown Duluth back in the summer of 1992 at the age of 14, and was fascinated by the city, loving that omnipresent cool breeze blowing off the lake shore that helped to cool down a few very steamy summer afternoons. Beyond that, the vantage point of the gargantuan Lake Superior is as close as many Midwesterners will ever get to seeing an ocean, and the lighthouses, lift bridges, and mountains of iron ore on the shoreline being readied for shipment on the nearby barges all make for a fairly surreal Minnesota experience for those of us from the farm belt of the state. Duluth seems to be divided into three fairly distinct parts as well, with gritty blue-collar neighborhoods on the west and southwest side, the college culture of UMD in and around scenic downtown Duluth, and the more affluent regions of the city on the east side. The common denominator in the city is overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic party, with all 36 precincts in Duluth voting dependably DFL (margins of better than 2-1 DFL is commonplace) every two years. The only reason Duluth isn't higher on my list is that it's a little too big for my taste. If the city was half the size it was, it'd be a little closer to my speed, but then again, there would less of it to admire and a smaller bounty of progressive-minded DFL votes to mine, so perhaps I better careful what I wish for.
The next batch (#30-21) should be coming early next week. My only hope is that I don't sorely offend some people eager to see their favorite towns on the list and they ultimately don't make my list!
#40. Granite Falls (Yellow Medicine and Chippewa Counties, est. pop. 3,000). The Minnesota River Valley is the source of many of the towns on my list, and Granite Falls is yet another, nestled into a scenic valley in west-central Minnesota about a half hour east of the South Dakota border. There are two particularly scenic drives leading to Granite Falls, including the journey northward on State Highway 23 where the cozy-looking town in the valley can be admired from afar. Even better is the 10-mile northbound stretch on State Highway 67 leading into town parallel to the windy river through the Upper Sioux Agency Indian Reservation lying just to the southeast of the city (regrettably the location of some unseemly tactics by the government waged against the native population in the 19th century). Granite Falls’ scenic location has been a source of despair lately, with recurrent flooding of the Minnesota River forcing engineers to move large sections of the city to higher ground. I have not been to Granite Falls since 2004, so I haven’t seen the changes since this experiment was reportedly undertaken. Politically, it’s a working-class town with a staunch DFL pedigree, even by west-central Minnesota standards, almost always going Democrat by a margin of two-to-one or better. I used to work in the newspaper business in southern Minnesota and was always impressed by the progressive editorials that always came out of the Granite Falls newspaper earlier this decade.
#39. Barnum (Carlton County, est. pop. 500). There are no shortage of cool towns in Carlton County, just south of Duluth, and one of the coolest is Barnum. My first encounter with Barnum came 16 years ago when my family stopped at a Happy Chef restaurant for breakfast off of I-35 en route to Duluth. The restaurant was built into a hill with a perfect vantage point of the freeway and, at the crest of the hill on the east side of I-35, Bear Lake and the dense north woods surrounding it. The community of Barnum, atop the hill on the other side of the restaurant, is very nice itself, but it’s that contrasting altitude and killer view that is seared into my mind. The restaurant atop the hill near the freeway is no longer a Happy Chef, but perhaps I’ll make another visit anyway one of these next years I drive past.
#38. Lake City (Wabasha and Goodhue Counties, est. pop. 4,500). The landscape of “bluff country” in Minnesota’s southeastern corner lends itself to some of the most beautiful small town settings in the Midwest. Resting on the banks of the Mississippi River about two hours southeast of the Twin Cities, Lake City features a geographic anomaly I don’t quite understand….a lake within a river. The lake in question is Lake Pepin, which expands the Mississippi between Minnesota and Wisconsin substantially for several miles. There’s no such thing as a bad time of year to visit Lake City, but I was most impressed driving along the lake shore in the summer, due to the prevalence of sailboats cast off on the lake in the warm weather. There’s not much of a sailboat culture in southern Minnesota, so seeing them en masse off the combined shores of Lake Pepin and the Mississippi gives Lake City some undeniable atmosphere. Lake City is a swing town politically, but seems to vote for Democrats significantly more than Republicans.
#37. St. James (Watonwan County, est. pop. 5,000). This is the town in my top-50 that I have the most personal connection with as I lived there for three years, working at the community’s local newspaper. But that wasn’t my first St. James experience. Of all the southern Minnesota towns where I helped my dad with vinyl repair work at car lots as a boy, St. James yielded some of my fondest memories (and ironically, one of the car salesmen we dealt with would turn out to be my boss 12 years later). Encountering a wide variety of personalities in this business, both my dad and I were struck by how friendly everybody seemed to be in St. James. This perception stuck with me as a young adult dealing with the locals on a daily basis in a job that doesn’t always generate goodwill. The welcoming mood of the community has really been put to the test in the last 20 years as the Latino population has exploded to around 30% of the town. While the community may not necessarily be integrated with perfect harmony, relations between the long-time residents and the Hispanics are better there than in any of the other small towns I’ve observed that have gone under a similar transition. Aesthetically, there is also an abundance of historic homes in the city, the scenic St. James Lake on the west side of town, and is surrounded by miles and miles of cornfields and Norman Rockwell-esque rural homesteads. Politically, the town has always leaned Democratic, but is trending slightly more so with the influx of Latinos, even though turnout among Latino voters is usually microscopic.
#36. Kennedy (Kittson County, est. pop. 250). For those not familiar with the “Red River Valley” dividing northwestern Minnesota and North Dakota, the land is said to be the flattest on the planet, so flat that you can see the curvature of the earth. I’ve put on hundreds of miles in the Red River Valley, and Kennedy in Minnesota’s northwesternmost county, serves up the best vantage point of the entire region’s fabled “horizontal grandeur”. Particularly with the depopulated rural regions of Kittson County (one township near Kennedy recently became the only township in the state with a population of zero), one can exit the town from any direction and see nothing but uninterrupted fields full of wheat and sugar beets on the horizon. Kennedy’s name indicates it’s an Irish settlement in a county that has the highest percentage of Swedes in the entire country, but the difference is negligible politically. Even though most of the Red River Valley had a weakness for George Bush in the last two Presidential elections, Kennedy still went for Gore and Kerry by landslide margins as it routinely does for all DFL candidates. Particularly telling is that 2006 GOP Senate candidate Mark Kennedy received less than 25% of the vote in the community that shares his name.
#35. Carlton (Carlton County, est. pop. 900). I mentioned just four towns ago that Carlton County south of Duluth is chock full of cool towns, and for me the coolest is the county’s namesake. Even though there are three towns in Carlton County larger, Carlton is the county seat and thus home to the courthouse and county offices. But the most memorable features of the town can be found just west and east of its city limits. On the east side is a bridge that runs parallel to the picturesque Thomson Reservoir and Dam. An even bigger treat to the senses can be found just west of Carlton, where a loading area for the nearby railroad runs parallel to the highway, with mountains of freshly cut pine logs, likely waiting for their final transport to the paper mill five miles up the road in Cloquet. There is usually not a single precinct, city or township, in Carlton County that votes Republican, and the city of Carlton is no exception, usually going for DFL candidates by margins of 3-1 or better.
#34. Balaton (Lyon County, est. pop. 600). Most people just don’t dig southwestern Minnesota from an aesthetic attraction angle, but as is so often the case, I’m the outlier. But even if one can’t get into the windswept prairies and storybook farm landscapes that dot the region, some of the towns have some real character. Balaton is one such example, particularly if one heads into the community from the east on U.S. Highway 14, otherwise known as Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway (for the record, Balaton is two towns west of Walnut Grove, setting of the “Little House on the Prairie” television and literary franchise). Scenic Lake Yankton rests along Balaton’s eastern edge and the banks of the lake along the highway are lined with the unusual pink quartzite rock so abundant in southwestern Minnesota. Driving into town, the setting from the highway is very cool, with the road sloping up and curving around the town resting on a hill to the south. Continuing westward from there, the first remnants of the Buffalo Ridge and the hundreds of wind turbines resting atop the ridge can be seen. Not everybody’s cup of tea, but I have managed to convert a few people into fans of the region by directing them to the right towns and roads. Balaton is about as swingy of a town as they come politically, usually going Democrat on Democratic years and Republican on Republican years.
#33. Houston (Houston County, est. pop. 1,000). I already made passing reference to the wildly impressive rural towns that lie in the valley of the Mississippi River bluffs in Minnesota’s southeastern corner that loo more like New England than the Midwest, but haven’t specifically mentioned the Root River Valley that runs along State Highway 16 en route to La Crosse, Wisconsin, arguably the best kept secret of Minnesota during peak fall color season. Every October, I make a point of making the journey, and one of my favorite towns on the route is Houston, which rests in a broad valley and provides visitors an exceptional vantage point of the bluffs on all sides of the community. If one is really adventurous, the backroads near Houston present some truly amazing eye candy, and I stumbled upon one remote home in rural Houston that looks identical to a painting at my parent’s house of a farm house in bluff country during harvest time. Houston County’s long-standing Republican politics have come a long way in just the past two or three election cycles, and part of the transition is likely related to the growth of organic farming, which is perfectly suited for the county’s hillsides which are not accommodating to larger-scale farming operations. In short, the region seems to have become just a little more “granola” than it was in previous generations. However, the city of Houston itself, settled by conservative Germans, continues to lean fairly comfortably Republican.
#32 Whalan (Fillmore County, est. pop. 60). One town down the list from Houston is a much tinier community that also rests along the banks of the Root River in southeastern Minnesota bluff country, less than an hour west of Houston. Whalan is the smallest town in my top-50, and what makes it specifically unique is its location on a teardrop-shaped peninsula of land almost completely encircled by the Root River, with one bridge crossing the river into the community of less than 40 homes. This "moat" effect of river water surrounding more than 80% of the town would seem ominous in terms of flooding, but the land seems to hover high enough above the river to where flooding doesn't seem to be a problem, even last August when southeast Minnesota was devasted by 17 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. The people of Whalan also seem to have a sense of humor, making the national news about 10 years ago for the annual tradition of an immobile parade on Main Street, where the people walk past the parade floats instead of vice versa since the town doesn't have enough streets to accommodate a traditional moving parade. Whalan is only a couple miles east of Lanesboro, another beautiful community in bluff country with a significant Amish presence. While Lanesboro is a fantastic town, it's become a little touristy for my taste, overflowing with visitors every weekend to the point that the equally beautiful landscape yet much sparser traffic density of neighboring Whalan is much more appealing to me. Politically, a handful of voters who have a change of heart can create a massive localized shift in a town this small, but with that said, I don't ever recall an election where Democrats haven't reined victorious among the few dozen voters of Whalan.
#31. Duluth (St. Louis County, est. pop. 86,000) Even those who are unfamiliar with nearly every other town on this list are certain to be familiar with Duluth, the population center of northern Minnesota and one of the most unique-looking cities in the country, located on a hill on the western edge of Lake Superior. I attended the Minnesota DFL convention in downtown Duluth back in the summer of 1992 at the age of 14, and was fascinated by the city, loving that omnipresent cool breeze blowing off the lake shore that helped to cool down a few very steamy summer afternoons. Beyond that, the vantage point of the gargantuan Lake Superior is as close as many Midwesterners will ever get to seeing an ocean, and the lighthouses, lift bridges, and mountains of iron ore on the shoreline being readied for shipment on the nearby barges all make for a fairly surreal Minnesota experience for those of us from the farm belt of the state. Duluth seems to be divided into three fairly distinct parts as well, with gritty blue-collar neighborhoods on the west and southwest side, the college culture of UMD in and around scenic downtown Duluth, and the more affluent regions of the city on the east side. The common denominator in the city is overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic party, with all 36 precincts in Duluth voting dependably DFL (margins of better than 2-1 DFL is commonplace) every two years. The only reason Duluth isn't higher on my list is that it's a little too big for my taste. If the city was half the size it was, it'd be a little closer to my speed, but then again, there would less of it to admire and a smaller bounty of progressive-minded DFL votes to mine, so perhaps I better careful what I wish for.
The next batch (#30-21) should be coming early next week. My only hope is that I don't sorely offend some people eager to see their favorite towns on the list and they ultimately don't make my list!
posted by Mark at 10:42 AM
3 Comments:
That's a very nice list of towns. If I'm able to make it up to MN sometime I want to see as many of them as I can, as well as some of the Twin Cities area. Being a city girl, I like spending time in cities, even if driving can be a hassle. I guess you get used to crazy drivers if you've lived in urban areas for a long time.
I too plan on making my own list of favorite places in California, only I still have a lot more territory to cover there, especially in the north. And with over 37 million people and over 160,000 square miles, I will have a tough time deciding on 50 favorite CA places. I may use 100 or something.
Sara, glad you've enjoyed the list. Hopefully, you'll enjoy the next batch of 10 as well.
Can't wait to see your list of favorite towns in California when you get around to it. With the price of gas, it won't be a cheap undertaking. Not sure exactly how many incorporated communities there are in California, but I suspect you're right that a top-100list would be necessary to do the list justice. What would you choose as the #1 town thus far?
Will Pine City be on this list? It's a great town, but I'm sure you already know that...
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