My 50 Favorite Towns in Minnesota #10-1

So here it comes....the best of the best in Minnesota according to Mark....

#10. Pipestone (Pipestone County, est. pop. 4,200). Approaching the city of Pipestone on any of the primary highways leading into town, one would not expect that amidst the endless miles of flat plains is a substantial quarry containing a geologically rare rock as well as the region’s only waterfall. But less than a mile north of town, both can be found at the Pipestone National Monument, a site on the National Register of Historic Places featuring cultural demonstrations of the quarried pipestone used by Native Americans to make “peace pipes”, among other things. Pipestone is not on a reservation, but has a moderate-sized Native American population and is only a few miles east of the Flandreau Santee Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I was recently called out by another reader about my geological awareness and am still not entirely sure if the pipestone rock and the red quartzite I mentioned in my profile of nearby Jasper are one and the same or just cousins, but the red rock is nonetheless omnipresent in a couple blocks of downtown buildings in Pipestone, giving the city one of the most distinctive looking downtown sections I’ve ever seen. An unusual concrete water tower complete with a circular staircase ascending the tower a few blocks to the east of downtown adds to the community’s color. With nearly a thousand wind turbines constructed on the Buffalo Ridge about 15 miles north of town, the turbine manufacturers must have decided in favor of regional expedience as a new plant has been built manufacturing wind turbine blades a few years ago, giving the area’s economy a desperately needed shot in the arm. Politically, Pipestone leans narrowly Democratic despite the overwhelming Republican advantage countywide made possible by Dutch settlements in the southeast. Pipestone and Cottonwood Counties are the only Minnesota counties where more than 20% of the population identify themselves as evangelicals.

#9. New Ulm (Brown County, est. pop. 13,500). Most outsiders who have been to New Ulm believe it’s a decent-sized city at least twice the size that it actually is, on par population-wise with Mankato 25 miles down the Minnesota River. Approaching New Ulm from the north on State Highway 15, the city looks much more like a booming mini-metropolis than a small town. Why does New Ulm have so many people fooled? It’s all in the layout of the city, which runs parallel to the river and is about five miles long and one mile wide, with the main highway through town running the entire length of the community. New Ulm’s identity almost exclusively revolves around its monolithically German heritage, with a heavily ethnic downtown business sector, German-style architecture dominating the community’s housing stock, and the recently restored Hermann the German statue. New Ulm’s population is dominated by people of German heritage moreso that just about any other city in the country, and ethnic pride is often perceived as snobbery by outsiders or non-Germans living in the community. But my personal experiences, both as a boy tagging along with my dad visiting car lots and as a journalist interviewing some eccentric New Ulm natives, left me with a decidedly favorable impression. My most memorable interview involved an older man and his wife who repaired accordions at a shop in their home. In the course of my two-hour interview, no fewer than four customers came in to pick up their repaired accordions. Only in New Ulm could such a business flourish! As is usually the case in German communities, New Ulm has long leaned Republican, but certainly not to the extent that nearby Sleepy Eye and the rural areas of Brown County do. Recently, however, something has been going on in New Ulm. In 2005 and 2006, I started seeing letters to the editor of newspapers from disgruntled New Ulm Republicans decrying their frustration with George Bush. Still, I dismissed it as a few outliers. Imagine my surprise in the 2006 midterms when New Ulm came out quite strong for Democrats, handing Amy Klobuchar a double-digit margin of victory and DFL victories in two of three statewide offices. New Ulm even turned out hometown boy Brad Finstad in the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2006, although the rural regions of the district gave Finstad even votes to narrowly avert a defeat. Perhaps it was a one-time fluke, but if the Democrats are making inroads in New Ulm, then things really are becoming hopeless for Republicans in Minnesota.

#8. Northfield (Rice and Dakota Counties, est. pop. 18,000). Northfield is an anomaly being a culturally and politically progressive community in exurbia. The conservative commuters ruining the politics of nearby Lonsdale must be carefully avoiding Northfield. The foundation of Northfield’s progressivism is connected to the two liberal arts colleges (Carleton and St. Olaf) located in town with a combined student population of around 5,000 and a reputation around the state for valuing education at every level. There is also a working-class contingent in Northfield, with a Malt-o-Meal plant in town, one of the few remaining agribusiness refuges left in a town whose economy used to revolve around agriculture and flour mills. With the colleges present, Northfield assuredly has the youngest average age of the towns in my top-50, most of the rest of which are rapidly graying retirement communities. Another staple of Northfield’s history and present-day cultural folklore is the thwarting of a bank robbery by Jesse James and the Younger Brothers back in 1876. The bank has since been converted to a museum and a reenactment of the incident is held every September in downtown Northfield. As previously alluded to, Northfield is the liberal stronghold of southern Minnesota, with DFL margins almost always in excess of 2-1. The needle has changed little in the last 20 years even as exurbia spreads its tentacles perpetually deeper into the Northfield area. The legacy of Northfield progressivism will always be personified by Paul Wellstone, the U.S. Senator who taught at Carleton College for many years before getting into politics by scoring one of the most unlikely upsets of an entrenched incumbent in recent political history. For me, Wellstone’s connection to Northfield is by itself reason enough to qualify the city for top-10 designation, but there are no shortage of other impressive attributes to the city either.

#7. Karlstad (Kittson County, est. pop. 800). As previously established, I routinely visited family in Thief River Falls as a boy, and it was on a weekend safari to Winnipeg, Canada, in 1989 that I first visited Karlstad in Minnesota’s northwesternmost county. I immediately took notice of the rapid change in landscape, where the flat pasture lands and wheat fields of Marshall County yielded to a more traditional “north woods” look near the Kittson County line. Most memorable was a sign in town identifying Karlstad as “the Moose Capital of the North”, complete with moose statues in the city park and advertisements for the annual “Moose Fest” held every August. The heavily wooded pocket north and east of Karlstad features a number of yellow traffic signs warning drivers to beware of crossing moose, an image that definitely stands out for a southern Minnesota native used to seeing only images of deer on yellow signs. The welcome deviation in landscape and the memorable nature of the town always helped Karlstad stand out in subsequent trips to Winnipeg in the years to come. Revisiting the town 10 years later as an adult, Karlstad proved to be a brief oasis from 95-degree heat on the August day I visited. I stopped at the corner gas station and, preparing to fill my tank, found myself getting approached by an attractive college-age girl greeting me warmly, but before my ego was allowed to get too inflated, she gingerly swiped the gas pump handle from my hand and informed me this was a full-service station, a concept that has become all but obsolete in the world I hailed from eight hours south. Crossing the generational divide, I then found myself buying a can of Sprite from the pop machine (yes, I’m an Upper Midwesterner…I call it “pop”) and getting into a friendly conversation with an elderly woman talking about the heat and apparently believing I was a local. I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise. As the name indicates, Karlstad is an overwhelmingly Scandinavian town, where “diversity” is defined as half the town being Norwegian and the other half being Swedish. Karlstad is a swing town politically, leaning very narrowly Democratic in comparison to the much more solid DFL allegiance in the agriculture precincts of Kittson County, where Democrats usually win by margins of 80% of higher.

#6. Biwabik (St. Louis County, est. pop. 950). In my first safari through the Iron Range as a 14-year-old boy in 1992, I was struck by the well-kept little town on the east side of the range with the red cobblestone sidewalks and the red lampposts lining its streets. The only problem is that I thought the town that so impressed me was next-door neighbor Gilbert, and held onto that erroneous impression for the next 12 years until I drove through the Iron Range again in 2004. Driving through Gilbert, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed, wondering if the town had either changed that much since my last visit or if I had simply imagined the “town painted in red” imagery etched in my brain. The disappointment ended quickly when I drove seven miles east to Biwabik and was reintroduced to the town I had long thought was Gilbert. Like most of the Iron Range towns, Biwabik has a gritty interior beyond the commercial streets, but the polished red look gives the town a tremendous source of identity compared to its numerous peers on the Range. Other amenities include the nearby Giants Ridge ski resort, the trailhead of the Mesabi Trail, and the “Honk the Moose” statue. I have never been able to put a finger on what the primary ethnic group is in Biwabik, but read somewhere that the community is Bavarian, which would make it something of an outlier in the Iron Range. Another source of contention is the pronouncement of Biwabik’s name, originally derived from an Ojibwe word. I would love clarification from somebody in the know if Biwabik has a long i sound (as in BY) or a short i sound. Biwabik has long been the most reliable Democratic stronghold on the Iron Range (or at least the St. Louis County portion of the Range), averaging DFL margins well over 80% almost every election cycle. This feat is particularly impressive if my assumption is correct that Biwabik is a Bavarian settlement, given that southern Germany typically produced the most conservative German immigrants in the United States.

#5. Rushford (Fillmore County, est. pop. 1,700). On State Highway 16, running along the scenic Root River Valley in southeastern Minnesota bluff country, the town of Lanesboro seems to monopolize all the acclaim. I certainly enjoy Lanesboro, but it's popularity has not come without a price. Tourist traffic is almost elbow to elbow on Main Street, particularly on autumn weekends. For me, the true treasure of the Root River Valley is about 20 miles northeast in the town of Rushford. The layout of the town is as picture perfect as any I've ever seen, in the valley of a large bluff that the town is essentially wrapped around, with a significant number of very large historic homes and a number of old-fashioned stores downtown, including a pizza and ice cream shop that I make sure to stop at every time I'm in town. On the face of the bluff, "Rushford" is spelled out in large white rocks, Hollywood-style, on full display for the town and motorists passing through. Atop the bluff are two scenic overlooks that provide an expansive view of the Root River, dozens of nearby bluffs, and the town below. I confess that I've never been to New England, and I have only seen its lauded fall foliage in magazine photos, but every time I look at the picturesque setting of Rushford from the bluff hundreds of feet above, I feel as though I'm looking at a picture of small-town New Hampshire in the White Mountains. I've never been to Rushford during the holiday season, but a Christmas tree-shaped light display is said to be lit up atop the bluff every December. Sadly, Rushford was on the receiving end of brutal, ruinous flooding last August (and some further flooding problems as I write this, but nothing approaching what's going a few miles south in Iowa), soaking about half of the town in flood water to the point that the town may never recover. And with the minimal threshold for reaching flood stage at this particular setting, it really isn't that wise to rebuild where some of the current building sites are located. When I visited last October, nearly two months after the flood, only one downtown business was reopened. I'm nervous about heading back this fall given that many of the storefronts may still be vacant. Even if it doesn't fully recover, Rushford is my favorite town in the area, and that's saying something considering how much I love southeastern Minnesota bluff country. Fillmore County is largely divided ethnically, with Republican Germans in the western half of the county and Democratic Norwegians on the east side. Rushford is a primarily Norwegian town and its politics reflect that with a consistently Democratic lean, producing margins that are sizeable but seldom overwhelming.

#4. Beardsley (Big Stone County, est. pop. 250). As is the case with all of my remaining favorites, the appeal of Beardsley is not necessarily gonna be shared by every Minnesota road warrior. Turning west at Graceville on State Highway 28, I always feel an inexplicable level of excitement voyaging into the heart of Minnesota's western hump. Part of it has to do with the long-standing populist history of the area's agrarian population, vastly reduced as the population plummets in the early 21st century. But what excites me most is the knowledge that the bizarre geology of the Traverse Gap provides the most expansive vantage point I've seen in Minnesota. Starting about a mile east of Beardsley, one can begin to see a horizon line many miles into South Dakota that brings to mind the "Big Sky Country" stereotype. Driving west through town, the full view comes into focus, made possible by the very sudden drop in elevation at the border in the manmade valley between Lake Traverse and Big Stone Lake, and the fast-rising elevation of the continental divide in Roberts County, South Dakota. On a sunny day, I would bet money that the vantage point just west of Beardsley allows one to see 30 miles worth of territory. On a cloudy day, the effect is lost completely. As for the town itself, Beardsley holds up quite well, as do nearly all of the towns in the region, considering the population decline and permanent state of economic recession. The ethnic breakdown in Beardsley is indeterminant and my guess is that it's a potpourri of Scandinavians along with the Irish "Connemera Catholics" that settled next door in Graceville. Beardsley's claim to fame is having recorded the all-time high temperature in the history of Minnesota, reaching a stifling 114 degrees in 1917. And just for the sake of trivia, Graceville next door is the birthplace of former Minnesota Twins Manager Tom Kelly. The politics of Beardsley is overwhelmingly Democratic, generating victories at least 2-1 in DFL favor in virtually every contest.

#3. Ruthton (Pipestone County, est. pop. 250). Here's another town that the Ely-loving wing of the state may not necessarily share my passion for, but Ruthton offers just the sort of subtle attractions that I always find most memorable and appealing. Ruthton sits just off of Highway 23, where three miles south of town is the most dramatic Buffalo Ridge crossing I've come across. The town itself, very clearly fighting for survival like most of its neighbors, sells the Buffalo Ridge's presence with virtually every business in town, past and present. The gas station of the edge of town calls itself "The Buffalo Ridge Express" and every current and past business on Main Street also invokes the Ridge, be it the Buffalo Ridge Bank, Buffalo Ridge Insurance, or the newspaper (which I believe is still in operation), The Buffalo Ridge Gazette. A manmade sign proudly boasts the community's population AND it's Ridge-induced elevation of 1,888 feet, enough to rank the town either first or second in the state elevation-wise. Heading south, Highway 23 cuts right through the actual Ridge at its steepest point, and the bald hills intermittently dotted with wind turbines whose massive size can be more easily appreciated in this particular setting. Those two or three miles atop the Buffalo Ridge provide a setting that can only be described as otherworldly, looking like footage straight out of a cheesy 1960's science fiction movie. While many simply would not get the appeal of this setting, this is one of the towns that I previously cited as helping me win over some converts to southwest Minnesota road tripping over the years. Politically, Ruthton almost always votes for Democrats, but is by no means a stronghold and margins are seldom supersized.

#2. Lake Benton (Lincoln County, est. pop. 700). ANOTHER town in southwest Minnesota, you ask? In the case of the one-of-a-kind Lake Benton, I can say with pride, "Indeed!" Only about eight miles east of the South Dakota border and the only town resting right on top of the Buffalo Ridge, it's fair to say Lake Benton was the birthplace of the modern-day "wind power" movement, being on the forefront of the installation of hundreds of wind turbines west of town in the mid-1990s. The turbines are popping up all over the country now and have lost some of their cache, but for years bus tours from the Twin Cities would make the nearly four-hour drive southwest to see the abundance of turbines on the mostly unfarmable plains just west of Lake Benton. The town itself ebbs and flows with the hilly terrain of the Buffalo Ridge which it sits atop and the housing stock has a much more colonial look to it than other towns in southwest Minnesota. Adding to the cultural appeal of Lake Benton is a historic opera house downtown with a regular lineup of plays scheduled, which is certainly a unique amenity in a town this small in an area this isolated. Just to the north of town is the lake the community is named for, which stretches several miles to the north and is easily one of the largest lakes in the southwestern part of the state. To the immediate west and south of town is a region known as "Hole in the Mountain" (I've also heard it referred to as the Prairie Highlands) with huge bald bluffs that are about as close to mountains as anyone could hope to see in southwest Minnesota, and look much like the rugged plains of West River South Dakota. I'm not sure if it's still open, but there used to be a downhill ski area at the Hole in the Mountain site. I'm not certain of Lake Benton's ethnic background, but expect there's some spillover from heavily Danish Tyler a few miles to its east, and perhaps some from Polish-heavy Ivanhoe to its north. The politics of Lake Benton is divided, but unfortunately it seems as though they have been leaning more Republican in recent years.

#1. Blue Earth (Faribault County, est. pop. 3,500). Here's a town that has had a couple of supporters in my past segments, but I'm sure the vast majority are exasperated at the concept of this farm town in south-central Minnesota, frequently wallowing in the foul odor of a nearby rendering plant if the wind is right (or wrong), being the best Minnesota has to offer. Any objective analysis would assuredly agree with that assessment, but it's a sentimental favorite for me based on an intangible love-at-first-sight introduction back in 1990 when my dad just started his vinyl repair work and Blue Earth was the first town we stopped at, pulling off that freeway and into town that Monday morning in July and for whatever reason igniting the spark that got me interested in Minnesota travel in the first place. And aside from my nostalgic bond to the town, Blue Earth is a really attractive community to boot, stench of decaying animals notwithstanding. It's nestled in the Blue Earth River Valley and is surrounded by some of the most fertile farmland in the country. The sign entering town says "Earth so rich the city grows", playing off of the region's well-known perfect soil quality. Just a brief distance further is the 55-foot statue of the Jolly Green Giant (the company operates a sweet corn cannery in town) overlooking the freeway and the businesses near it and undoubtedly the source of multiple requests from little kids to stop and see the Giant. Almost every street of the town is clean and well-kept with a comparatively vibrant downtown area. Blue Earth was settled by Germans, so unfortunately the politics are not favorable, leaning quite heavily Republican much like next door neighbor Fairmont but not completely out of reach for Democrats on really good years (Amy Klobuchar won by five points, for instance). It's unlikely anybody else who doesn't live in Blue Earth would qualify the town as his or her favorite in Minnesota, but I have my reasons and stand by them, and 18 years after the fact continue to feel a sense of excitement pulling off of I-90 to drive through Blue Earth, the town that's only 40 miles away from where I grew up by nonetheless got the ball rolling on my insatiable exploration conquest of the state of Minnesota.

My 50 Favorite Minnesota Towns #20-11

The next batch of 10 revealed....

#20. Luverne (Rock County, est. pop. 4,500). Anybody who watched Ken Burns’ miniseries “The War” will recognize Luverne as one of the four communities profiled. Luverne is located along I-90 in the southwesternmost Minnesota county and is easily more connected to the culture of South Dakota than Minnesota. The landscape starts to get more South Dakota-ish as well as a tiny chunk of Rock County is the only region of Minnesota defined as the “inner coteau” soil type. I’m not entirely sure what that means, other than there are thick loess deposits, but for whatever reasons the vantage points from the freeway on both sides of Luverne are very extensive, enabling the driver to see homes and farms on either a prolonged horizon line or else a very convincing mirage of a prolonged horizon line. In my profile of Jasper, I discussed the pink quartzite rock abundant in the area (I was called out by one reader, but I don’t think “pipestone” and the pink quartzite I speak of are the same thing) and used in the construction and landscaping of that town. Several buildings in Luverne are constructed with the same unusual yet attractive rock, including the Rock County Courthouse. Heading north of Luverne on U.S. Highway 75, the Blue Mounds State Park is located near the crest of a large hill. I’ve never had the opportunity to go inside, but the park is full of the buffalo that used to roam the region before its human settlement. Rock County is a Republican stronghold, mostly due to the large percentage of Dutch evangelicals in the rural regions of the county. The city of Luverne is divided, but leans slightly Republican.

#19. Fairmont (Martin County, est. pop. 11,000). I definitely have a weakness for the southern Minnesota towns where I traveled with my dad doing vinyl repair work at car lots back in the early 1990s. Fairmont was another frequent destination, and on mornings when he was feeling particularly well-heeled, I was able to convince him to go out for breakfast at either the Perkins or Happy Chef just off the freeway. A decade later, my work at the newspaper in St. James led me to multiple interviews in Fairmont, and as was the case with my early encounters with the locals, I was struck by how friendly the people always seemed to be. At least up until lately, I’ve also been impressed by how well Fairmont has maintained its business sector given its stagnant population. The downtown area remains very nice and the string of lakes dotting the city’s south side makes for some nice lakeside drives in scenic neighborhoods. A 3M plant remains one of Fairmont’s main employers, along with a small meat processor that hosted a very high-profile visit from Paul and Linda McCartney in the early 1990s, both hyping some vegetarian dish that Linda was marketing with the company. The only major downside with Fairmont is its politics. Like most communities settled primarily by German immigrants, Fairmont is heavily Republican. Even Amy Klobuchar, who won the 2006 Senate race by 20 points statewide, only managed to eke out a one-point margin of victory in Fairmont. Republican State Representative Bob Gunther is from Fairmont and his district included St. James where I worked at the newspaper, so I got regular visits from him. Gunther, who ran a small grocery store in town and often gets some acclaim from Democrats for bipartisan overtures, always seemed to enjoy talking politics with me even though we didn’t see eye to eye. He was kind of a smartass at times, but I generally liked the guy. I definitely felt bad when I drove through town last year and discovered his store has apparently gone out of business.

#18. Grand Marais (Cook County, est. pop. 1,200). As scenic as it is, Cook County, at the tip of northeastern Minnesota’s Arrowhead region, is a frustrating area for a road-tripper, at least it is for this road-tripper. Particularly for someone who begins the day way down by the Albert Lea area, by the time you get to Grand Marais and Grand Portage and then backtrack on Highway 61, the only major highway in the entire county (!!), your day is pretty much over. It’s only when one is driving the 175-mile voyage northeast of Duluth that he or she can appreciate that the Grand Marais area is almost as far east as Madison, Wisconsin. Minor grumbling aside, it’s well worth one’s day to navigate the entire span of Highway 61 on Lake Superior’s North Shore. There are disappointingly few vantage points of Lake Superior from the highway in St. Louis and Lake Counties, but seems to be one every two or three miles in Cook County, especially in and around Grand Marais, the only incorporated city in a 100-mile stretch of highway between Silver Bay and the Canadian border. Only a few miles north of Grand Marais is Eagle Mountain, which at 2,300 feet above sea level is Minnesota’s highest point. I recall a landslide on Highway 61 on the southwest side of Cook County about 15 years ago that barricaded the highway. With 61 being the only road leading out of the county, the people of Grand Marais were trapped between the site of the landslide and the Canadian border until the debris was cleared out. Grand Marais has always leaned Democrat, particularly in state and local elections, but has recently moved in an even more leftward direction with the arrival of outsiders, the opposite of the trendline occurring in most of northern Minnesota’s resort and cabin country which have become more Republican with population growth.

#17. Browns Valley (Traverse County, est. pop. 675). When I ventured into Minnesota’s aforementioned “western hump” region for the first time eight years ago, I wasn’t expecting much. To my surprise, the flat farmland that typifies western Minnesota terrain yielded to the hilly plains of the North/South Continental Divide. The geological history of the region, known as the Traverse Gap, is incredibly complicated and even my thorough reading of its history on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traverse_Gap) left me more confused than ever. Whatever the case, the scenery is very impressive for western Minnesota, be it the rising slope of the continental divide across the border in northeastern South Dakota or the tree-lined highways running adjacent to both Lake Traverse and Big Stone Lake on the north and south side of the city of Browns Valley. Another claim to fame for the community occurred in the 1930s when a Paleo-Indian skeleton was unearthed in the area. The skeleton would later be known as “Browns Valley Man” and studied extensively by scientists. Even today, Native Americans make up more than 15% of Browns Valley’s population, most likely expatriates from the Sisseton Indian Reservation across the border in South Dakota. Unfortunately, Browns Valley is flood-prone and was hit hard again just last year, undoubtedly hastening the population decline in this already-struggling area. The combined influences of Native American culture and west-central Minnesota’s farm populist movement have long made Browns Valley a Democratic stronghold. As the population declines, the numbers have softened a little in the last 20 years, but the community has still voted comfortably Democratic in every state, local, and national election I’ve tracked.

#16. Chisholm (St. Louis County, est. pop. 4,800). Just about all of northeastern Minnesota’s Iron Range towns are rough around the edges to an extent. Aside from the decidedly blue-collar housing stock that would look more at home in the oldest neighborhoods of a major city than in small-town Minnesota, there’s an admirably irascible rebel spirit alive in the people, who use “theater night” loopholes in defiance of smoking bans in bars and proudly celebrate the region’s 19th century brothel culture with summer festivals named “Whorehouse Days”. Feisty state representative Tom Rukavina from nearby Virginia is the most colorful character in the Minnesota Legislature and is in many ways an excellent emissary for the region’s hardball and often contradictory demography. Adding to the conflicting image is the undeniable natural beauty that surrounds these towns and valiant efforts to smooth out the towns’ rough interiors with local attractions. Chisholm is at the forefront of this effort, fancying itself the “hub of the Iron Range” and features a mining museum with an underground shaft, the open-pit Hull Rust Mine, and the Iron World Interpretive Center. There’s also a statue of “the Iron Man” on the south side of town. Outside the context of the iron ore industry’s self-promotion, Chisholm also features a snazzy Bridge of Peace on the east side of town, with flags from countries all over the world flying above on both sides of the highway. While the insurgency of Asia’s steel industry has been brutal to the steel industry of the United States, it has actually proven beneficial for Minnesota’s Iron Range since the Chinese need the iron ore excavated here as much as Pittsburgh and Bethlehem do. I’m sure that constitutes a moral dilemma of sorts for the steelworker brotherhood, but it is nice to see at least a partial rebound of the long-suffering Iron Range, particularly on the west side of the range where most of the new growth seems to be occurring. All of the Iron Range is one-party territory, dominated by the DFL, but Chisholm seems to rubber-stamp Democratic candidates with even larger margins, averaging around 80%.

#15. Chandler (Murray County, est. pop. 275). I have waxed poetic about the subtle attractions of southwestern Minnesota’s Buffalo Ridge in previous entries, and the specific setting of Chandler, where the terrain of the Buffalo Ridge meets the Chanarambie Creek valley, helps give the community even more identity with bald, rolling hills much more reminiscent of the Great Plains than of the corn and soybean fields that dominate southwest Minnesota. Most of the city of Chandler is nestled near the bottom of the valley, surrounded by the bluffs formed by the Buffalo Ridge and the creek valley on both sides. The north side of Chandler slopes up the hill at a steep enough angle that I can hear my car engine strain when attempting to ascend it. My first visit to Chandler came in 2001, ten years after half of the community was destroyed by an F5 tornado. The town has a fairly “new” look because of it, and I’ve always been curious as to how much different the town looked before my first visit. The major downside of Chandler is its politics. I made passing reference to the substantial settlement of evangelical Dutch communities in Minnesota’s southwestern corner, and Chandler (along with nearby Edgerton) are the population centers of that settlement. As a consequence, Chandler is the second most Republican town in the state of Minnesota, giving the GOP an average level of support in the 85% range every two years and often times single-handedly providing the GOP the necessary margin of victory in otherwise DFL-leaning Murray County. In other words, drive through town, admire its beauty, and perhaps even talk about the weather with the generally friendly locals, but do not under any circumstance bring up politics!

#14. Marshall (Lyon County, est. pop. 13,000). Another town I have an explicable soft spot for based on my early travels, Marshall’s economy revolves around the Schwan’s Company, known for transporting frozen food products in yellow trucks to homes in the furthest reaches of the rural Midwest. I’m not sure if this statistic still holds up, but Schwan’s used to be Minnesota’s fourth largest company, and easily the largest company outside of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. As a consequence, Marshall is an island of impressive prosperity in a struggling region, with per capita incomes and home values more than double that of working-class Worthington an hour down the road. I’ve heard conflicting reports on how worker-friendly of a company Schwan’s is. A friend of mine who worked there part-time during college insisted “they treat their workers like kings”, but I’ve also heard the truck drivers are kept on an incredibly short leash. Considering the company’s outspoken preference for the Republican Party and its reputation for being proudly non-union, color me a cynic. Nonetheless, Schwan’s willingness to stand by Marshall given its many regional disincentives is at least worthy of some acclaim. As previously inferred, Marshall is also a college town, home to Southwest State University which has received a great deal of positive recognition for being one of the highest-quality, low-cost schools in the country. It undoubtedly makes college available and affordable to plenty of low-income students from the hurting small towns of southwest Minnesota who would otherwise have few other options. The presence of the college also helps to dilute what would otherwise be an insurmountable Republican advantage in this company town settled by conservative Germans. Republicans always seem to find a way to win in Marshall, but the margins tend to be fairly soft most years…much softer than several other German communities in Minnesota that are far less affluent.

#13. Kiester (Faribault County, est. pop. 550). In a previous profile, I made passing reference to my admiration for the smaller farm towns on the back roads of southern Minnesota struggling to survive in the changing economy but managing to maintain a stiff upper lip to camouflage their struggles. Faribault County is home to a number of little towns like this, and none of them wear the mask better that Kiester, an impressively well-kept Norwegian town a couple of miles north of the Iowa border. Of the 50 towns on my list, Kiester is the closest to where I grew up and the only town where I have familial ties, with distant relatives living in the town and plenty more buried in a cemetery between Kiester and nearby Bricelyn. The community’s perseverance can be seen driving down Main Street where a grocery store and even a single-screen movie theater continue to operate. The times have caught up with Kiester elsewhere, however. Their school district merged with a couple of other area districts about 15 years ago with the understanding that the school in Kiester would continue to function as the district’s shared middle school. As usually happens in such mergers, the district’s population center ultimately proposed a new school levy to consolidate the entire student body into one building. Kiester put up one helluva fight, recognizing that the closing of the school is the final nail in the coffin of a community’s demise, but ultimately lost, with the middle school either closed already or poised to close next spring. This vintage display of Scandinavian stubbornness is very consistent with the town’s identity, and thankfully it translates to its politics, where DFL margins almost always run 2-1 or better.

#12. Elba (Winona County, est. pop. 200). There are so many great towns in southeastern Minnesota’s bluff country, I could almost do a top-50 list of towns in only five or six SE MN counties. Some of the most impressive are the tiny, isolated towns off the beaten path, including the gem of Elba, nestled in a very deep valley in close proximity to the scenic Whitewater State Park. While most of the towns in Mississippi River Valley bluff country can be most closely compared to New England, the deepness of the valley in which Elba is located, and the look of the town itself, feels closer to the hollers of Appalachia minus the coal. Much of southeastern Minnesota was severely flooded last August (and is getting hammered again this week), and from what I understand Elba suffered some of the most serious damage in the region when the levy near the Whitewater River burst open. A guy from hometown was staying at Whitewater State Park the weekend the floods occurred and made the front page of the local paper with a very dramatic story of rescuing his four children amidst fast-rising flood waters. I haven’t been in Elba since the flood damage and hope the town hasn’t been too badly compromised. Politically, Elba has always leaned Democratic by varying margins without being a stronghold of DFL dominance.

#11. Wabasha (Wabasha County, est. pop. 2,500). Sticking in the same neighborhood of southeastern Minnesota, Wabasha has always been an impressive town on the banks of the Mississippi River and lays claim to being Minnesota’s oldest community (settled in the 1830s), but its profile has been raised further with the reemergence of the bald eagle from the brink of extinction a couple of decades ago. Particularly in the winter months, the warm waters of the Mississippi River provide a sanctuary for the majestic birds, which soar above the region by the thousands. The National Bald Eagle Center is located in downtown Wabasha, which I must admit is a challenge to visit for a guy like myself who’s always had a bit of phobia of large birds. Also scenic in the winter months is how refrozen snowmelt creates icicle waterfalls that glisten over the edges of the river valley bluffs near town. Ice fishing and ice shack contests are held in the winter in honor of the film “Grumpy Old Men”, which filmed several scenes in Wabasha. Another unique fixture in the city is a bridge that begins in the middle of town and slowly elevates for a few blocks before rising above the downtown streets and ultimately crossing the Mississippi River into Wisconsin. The politics of Wabasha have always been left-of-center, and Democratic margins have actually been growing in recent election cycles, with John Kerry pulling off an impressive 60% margin in 2004.

The exciting top-10 is only a couple of days away!

My 50 Favorite Minnesota Towns #30-21

Here's my next batch of favorites:

#30. Thief River Falls (Pennington County, est. pop. 8,000). I have a special connection to this population center of Minnesota’s northwestern corner as my favorite cousin grew up there and I visited there at least once a year as a boy in the 1980s and early 1990s. I have a treasure trove of memories involving the two of us riding our bikes across town, and specifically over the bike path bridge hovering above Thief River, eager to spend every penny of our allowance money on junk food. Back in the early 1990s, I attended their county fair and was treated to a concert by country singer Tanya Tucker, who jokingly muttered a tagline often stated in reference to Thief River Falls, that “she felt like she had arrived at the edge of the earth!” A math teacher at my high school who grew up in a nearby small town made a similar “edge of the earth” reference about Thief River Falls and told me it was a common sentiment among the locals, but the locals nonetheless weren’t very amused to hear that insider joke coming from the mouth of Tanya Tucker! Located on the eastern edge of the Red River Valley, Thief River Falls is surrounded by wheat and sugar beet fields, but the primary engine of its economy has always been snowmobiles. The snowmobile manufacturer Arctic Cat is, or rather was, headquartered in this small city for decades, but if my understanding is correct, the headquarters is now relocating to the Twin Cities. I’m not sure if the manufacturing operation is leaving town as well, but if it is, Thief River Falls will be devastated. Politically, like most of the Red River Valley, Thief River Falls is a bastion of DFL strength in state and local elections, but voted against both Gore and Kerry in the last two Presidential elections. Most likely, issues of “expanding public access to snowmobilers” played a role in Bush’s dual wins up in Arctic Cat country.

#29. Wheaton (Traverse County, est. pop. 1,600). Anybody whose studied a map of Minnesota will be familiar with the fact that there’s an extra bite of territory in the state’s west-central border with northeastern South Dakota. For lack of a better term, I refer to the sparsely populated region as Minnesota’s “western hump”. The geography of this region is very complicated, with rivers diverted to form manmade lakes alongside the continental divide on the South Dakota side. Whatever the case, the drive northeast along Lake Traverse on State Highway 27 en route to Wheaton is an outstanding stretch of highway, with a wooded corridor running next to the narrow lake and offering an impressive view of the rolling hills of South Dakota on the other side. Continuing eastward through farmland for a few miles on the far northern side of the western hump is the community of Wheaton, a very well-kept bedroom community in an economically struggling region that advertises itself as “the land of ducks”. Something about the name and location of Wheaton lends itself to certain stereotyping. A guy in my college creative writing class randomly chose Wheaton, Minnesota, off the map as the location for his fictional account of a young man hiding from his past while working at a small-town newspaper. The writer by no means portrayed Wheaton as an enclave of hayseed bigots, but the conservative image he projected of the town at least partially conflicts with its history as a hotbed of fiery farm populism a century ago. Wheaton was on the northern edge of west-central Minnesota’s farm populist movement, the movement that created the socialist Farmer-Labor party, and continues to be a DFL stronghold today. Unfortunately, its graying population and fading ag-based economy certainly makes it seem like Wheaton’s best days are in its past.

#28. Jasper (Pipestone and Rock Counties, est. pop. 600). As far as I know, the Jasper area in Minnesota’s southwestern corner features the largest deposit of the unusual and aesthetically pleasing pink quartzite rock in the world. Much of the landscaping and many of the homes in the community are constructed with the colorful rock, which is the engine of Jasper’s economy. Driving on Highway 23 north and south of Jasper, large chunks of the red rock can be seen rising above the surface of the unfarmable plains, and although I’ve never seen the process, many Jasper area residents mine the rock, a process that is said to be very physically demanding. The rock is ultimately used in a variety of different products, including the red bricks made in Springfield, Minnesota about an hour east of here. Politically, Jasper is a blue-leaning community in a sea of red rock. Even as Kerry was losing Pipestone County at large by 22 points in 2004, he won the city of Jasper by six points. My personal near-calamity one mile north of Jasper involved nearly hitting a deer crossing the road directly in front of me back in 2003. My choice was to either slam on the brakes and risk veering into incoming traffic or to take my foot off the gas and hope the deer was able to get out of my way before he met the hood of my car. I chose the latter option and the deer actually needed to lift his rear paw onto my hood and springboard himself into the ditch to avoid a collision. I immediately pulled over and was amazed to see that my car got by with not so much as a scratch. Pulling over behind me an elderly woman who looked to be about 80 speaking with a thick Scandinavian accent (Danish, I think). We chatted for several minutes after she was able to discern that the deer had escaped without injury. I’ve been to Jasper once or twice since and am always more attentive to my surroundings than usual, expecting that same elusive deer to tempt fate once again.

#27. Lismore (Nobles County, est. pop. 250). For a number of reasons, I’m partial to the prairie landscapes of southwestern Minnesota, and the tiny community of Lismore in the state’s southwestern corner offers one of the most perfect “town on the prairie” landscapes I’ve come across when passing by it on State Highway 91. Lismore is about a half mile west of the highway and the vantage point allows one to see almost every home in town as well as the community’s vocal point, a very memorable white and green Irish Catholic church that stands out like a beacon on Lismore’s main street. Driving into the town once, I discovered I wasn’t the only one taken in by the church as a young artist who certainly looked like an out-of-towner was sitting on a grassy knoll across the street drawing a sketch of the large church in the small town. The cluster of Irish communities in western Nobles County is almost always a hotbed of Democratic strength, even though it can be safely discerned that the abortion issue is a factor working against the party in these monolithically Catholic towns. Nonetheless, Lismore is perhaps the hardest-core Democratic town in the bunch, routinely voting for even the weakest-performing Democratic candidates by 20-point margins, and going as high as 3-1 Democrat in most state and local elections.

#26. Lake Wilson (Murray County, est. pop. 275). Less than 20 miles up the road from Lismore on Highway 91 is another of my favorites that also happens to be an Irish settlement. Lake Wilson features an outstanding vantage point of the Buffalo Ridge a few miles to its west, particularly for travelers heading west on Highway 30. The community itself has a nice lake on its east side, and the highway curves around the lake to cut through the downtown area (that was rocked by a gas leak explosion about five years ago), which is a nice change in that most highways curve to go around the entire town in the fast-paced modern era of superhighway expedience. Heading west, it’s hard to miss the incremental upward slope of the Buffalo Ridge. I actually preferred this drive above seven or eight years ago as it offered the last unspoiled vantage point of the Buffalo Ridge before additional wind turbines were built. The Buffalo Ridge has the highest concentration of wind turbines in the country (perhaps the world) and I appreciate their presence for the most part, but I guess I would have preferred to hang onto this one last vestage of the Buffalo Ridge landscape without turbines, particularly since at the crest of the windswept Ridge is a treeless homestead and a giant wooden cutout of a buffalo that can be seen from miles away. I actually felt my heart skip a beat the first few times I approached this buffalo cutout so close to the highway, as it looks real enough from a distance to make a driver worry about dodging a 1,000-pound buffalo crossing the highway. Lake Wilson votes for Democrats the vast majority of the time, but is not as reliable as Lismore. Bear in mind, however, that Minnesota’s southwestern corner is in the Sioux Falls media market, all but completely shut out from Minnesota politics. Thus, Minnesota might have been a battleground state in 2004, but the people of Lake Wilson wouldn’t have known it based on the local advertising market which, at the time, would have been consumed almost exclusively with Daschle vs. Thune ads.

#25. Ada (Norman County, est. pop. 1,600). My list has already included a number of fine towns in northwestern Minnesota’s Red River Valley, and one of my favorites is this folksy-sounding community located in an area that has always struck me as the heart of the region. My dad claims that my grandfather, a native of the Red River Valley, was very close to buying a farm near Ada, but ultimately moved on to southern Minnesota where he eventually settled. Every time I think of Ada, I’m reminded of the main female character in the film “The Piano”, but the similarities between that film and this rural farm town certainly end there. Aside from the wheat and sugar beets that dominate the flat fields of the Red River Valley, the area just east of Ada on the nearby White Earth Indian Reservation also grows large quantities of wild rice along the banks of the aptly titled Wild Rice River. One intriguing aspect of the landscape near Ada is the abundance of cement slabs every few miles with what appears to be old-fashioned threshing machines and lengthy conveyor belts. These can be seen throughout the Red River Valley, but seem to be the most abundant around Ada. I’ve never been sure exactly what they are and would welcome any insight from those who do. Ada leans significantly Democratic, but is not a stronghold. Strangely enough, most of the farm areas of Norman County are Democratic strongholds, with certain townships averaging DFL margins as high as 80-90%. While its not uncommon to see farm areas of western Minnesota being overwhelmingly DFL, margins this high are particularly striking, and I have to assume it’s in solidarity with the reviled-most-places-but-here “sugar cartel”.

#24. Madison (Lac qui Parle County, est. pop. 1,700). Scandinavian pride is on display in a wide number of Minnesota communities, but no other community in the state is as bold in paying homage to its Norwegian ancestry than Madison, a west-central Minnesota farm town about 10 miles east of the South Dakota border. Without a hint of self-consciousness, Madison proclaims itself “Lutefisk Capital of the World” on its welcome sign heading into town, underneath a giant statue of the city’s mascot “Lou T. Fisk”. For those not familiar, lutefisk is a white fish native to Scandinavia that can only be loved (or even tolerated) by ethnic purists with the deepest sense of fjordian nostalgia. And lest anyone believe Madison is all bluster about its love of lutefisk, a brief drive through town will quickly dispel one’s doubts, with lutefisk lampposts downtown, a smiling lutefisk carved into a tree in the park, and even a slippery little lutefisk painted onto the city’s water tower. And although I’ve never been in town during their annual lutefisk festival, a national reporter from the Discovery Channel did make the journey to Madison a few years back and got to partake in not only eating lutefisk (to the bemused shock of the locals, he wasn’t digging it) but to also participate in several lutefisk-related events going on in the city for the weekend. It’s hard not to admire the spunk and sense of humor that Madison puts into its unusual claim to fame, particularly as the town continues to typify the graying and depopulation of rural America. Madison is near the epicenter of the farm populist movement that predated the formation of the Farmer-Labor Party, and both the town and surrounding rural area continue to be a hotbed of farm populism today, home of leftist Minnesota Farmers Union President Doug Peterson and an unblemished allegiance to the Democratic Party.

#23. Taylors Falls (Chisago County, est. pop. 900). As recently as 15 years ago, Chisago County was a rural area northeast of the Twin Cities dominated by Minnesotans of Swedish descent and leftist politics. In the 15 years since, the region has become exurbia, its population doubling and its politics moving to the center-right. Recently, however, Daily Kos contributor Jeremy Kalin was elected to the Legislature from this district, indicating at least a partial swinging of the pendulum back politically. On the periphery of the exurban culture is Taylors Falls, a very scenic bluff community resting on a hill along the banks of the St. Croix River, with the Wisconsin state line a stone’s throw away. It’s a very nice community and, at least as of my most recent visit, did not exhibit the telltale signs of sprawl that, for better or worse, usually leave a bad taste in my mouth. Given its proximity to the metro area (probably 45 minutes or less from St. Paul), Taylors Falls may eventually be absorbed into the blandness of exurban enclaves such as nearby Forest Lake, but the setting of the existing community is picturesque enough to where it should continue to warrant my acclaim and desire to visit in the years ahead. Even in the days when Chisago County was producing gung-ho 20-point margins of victory for the likes of Republicans Tim Pawlenty and Norm Coleman, Taylors Falls was one of the only holdouts in the county, sticking by DFLers in the vast majority of elections, although sometimes only by the slimmest of margins. Now, as the county at large moves left again, Taylors Falls appears to be moving further left itself.

#22. Montevideo (Chippewa County, est. pop. 5,500). If you’re like me, you probably think the shared name between the west-central Minnesota river town and the capital of the South American nation of Uruguay is a coincidence. Amazingly, this community was at least in part settled by South Americans, and there’s a statue in the city’s scenic downtown business sector that tells the story. The city does have a growing Hispanic population, but that has only emerged in the last decade or so, indicating that the Scandinavian settlers were infinitely more abundant that whatever microscopic South American settlement remained in town. Whatever the case, Montevideo is a very well-kept river town with perfectly groomed streets lined with trees and sloping hills down into the Minnesota River Valley. I have a couple personal connections to the town as my college roommate married his wife, a Montevideo native, in town several years ago. Furthermore, the publishing outfit that owned the newspaper I worked at in St. James was headquartered in Montevideo, so we made a couple road trips that way for seminars and meeting with the chief poobah boss. Adding to the local culture is nearby Lac qui Parle, a marshy lake that is apparently perfect for geese. In the spring, as many as 200,000 geese pass through the Lac qui Parle area and stick around through the fall. Some of the hard-core farm populist regions of west-central Minnesota can be found north and east of Montevideo in Chippewa County, lending to a Democratic tilt to the community. With that said, Montevideo was far from a Democratic stronghold 20 years ago. Nonetheless, the DFL's margins in the community have grown steadily larger with each passing election cycle to the point that Democrats are now winning Montevideo by almost 20 points each election cycle and Chippewa County was the region's strongest county for most Democratic candidates in the 2006 election. Not sure what exactly has contributed to the leftward shift, but I'll take it.

#21. International Falls (Koochiching County, est. pop. 7,000). At least in terms of population centers, International Falls has to be one of the most isolated towns in the country. The nearest town of more than 1,000 people is at least 70 miles away…..in any direction! The long drive into town coming from the west on State Highway 11 runs along the scenic Rainy River, with visible homesteads across the river in Ontario, Canada, no more than 100 yards away and the radio stations (all three of them you can get in on the dial up there!) broadcasting the temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius. The main highway leading into International Falls is U.S. Highway 53 running heading towards the Iron Range, which is more than two hours to the south. The highway runs near the Voyaguers National Park and a significant percentage of the traffic consists of trucks hauling logs up to the International Falls paper mills. I love all three of northern Minnesota’s paper mill towns (Cloquet and Grand Rapids are the other two), but International Falls is my favorite of the three, where one can essentially follow the smell of fresh pine directly to the Canadian border as the paper mill is located just south of the bridge crossing into Fort Frances, Canada. The logging issue appears to make for a strange political culture in International Falls, with instinctive tendencies towards the Democratic Party usually winning the day, and often by overwhelming margins, but with Republicans occasionally doing decent business when the Democrats are perceived as “tree huggers”. International Falls’ designation as the “icebox of America” is a source of pride for the natives (the first time I was there in August 2003, the temperature was 97 degrees), as well as the source of income from a number of companies testing products in the cold of northern Minnesota. Another unlikely quirk of International Falls, given its location, is its high African-American population. For a couple of decades now, the remote Rainy River Community College has propped up its enrollment numbers by aggressively recruiting in inner cities. It’s very surprising to walk through town and see the hundreds of young blacks in the community. International Falls is a community that isn’t on the way to anywhere. It’s literally the end of the road, so anyone who wants to visit the town needs to make a specific voyage to see it. But in my opinion every true Minnesota aficionado owes it to themselves to make the trip once.

The top-20 should be on its way before week's end.

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!

Minnesota's 50 Best Towns

In the next couple of weeks, I'm going to unveil in descending order the 50 Minnesota communities that impressed me most in my many years of road-tripping through the state, specifically my pursuit of attending all 734 of Minnesota's incorporated communities which I just completed last September. As with my top-150 country songs of all-time list from last year, this list will look nothing any other Minnesotan's would-be list of favorite communities as my personal tastes and evaluating criteria are unique and often fairly arbitrary. My only disclaimer is that all 50 of my favorites are communities from outstate Minnesota. Rather than prolong this explanation, I'll simply carry on with the first segment of the list, consisting of the communities that rank 50-41....

#50--Red Lake Falls (Red Lake County, estimated population 1,400). Not to be confused with the Indian reservation town of Red Lake about an hour east. This community, far removed from the Native American culture, is actually named after the Red Lake River and is an agricultural town that has gotten a boost from the recent growth of the sugar beet market in the past decade. Politically, it's a DFL stronghold at the local and state level, but inexplicably voted for George Bush by narrow two-point margins in the last two Presidential elections, the only Republican I've ever seen win Red Lake Falls in the last 20 years. Despite declining population and being in a county ranked near the bottom in per capita income in Minnesota, Red Lake Falls is very well-kept and seems much larger than it actually is when one drives through on State Highway 32, dipping into the river valley that divides the town and then hooking around to explore much of the rest of the community. With the frequently long expanses of highway between towns of measurable size in northwestern Minnesota, Red Lake Falls is a very pleasant oasis of civilization.

#49--Morris (Stevens County, est. pop. 5,000). I'm a rare bird, but I just love western Minnesota, and Morris actually qualifies as a population center in the state's sparse west-central farm region. It's a college town, with one of the four University of Minnesota campuses in the community, that helps keep the economy alive in a struggling region. The overwhelming majority of small towns in west-central Minnesota lean DFL thanks to the farm populist movement of a century ago, but Morris' academic culture lends to an even deeper DFL tilt, which helps offset the uber-Republican Hutterite communities that live in the rural areas surrounding Morris. The town is very clean with a nice, vibrant downtown area. It's just too bad there aren't more opportunities for college students in Morris to stick around after graduation.

#48--Bemidji (Beltrami County, est. pop. 12,000). Another college town, Bemidji is home to a state university and is located in northwestern Minnesota, but in a woodsier setting than the farm town of Red Lake Falls. With scenic Lake Bemidji on the east side of town, the city is a pretty significant tourist draw, which in general takes away some of the appeal for me in most such communities. But the remoteness of Bemidji, more than four hours north of the Twin Cities, along with its college culture and the Native American influence with the state's two largest tribes less than a half hour away, give this city some extra identity that a more typical "touristy lake town" like Alexandria lacks. Politically, Bemidji would be divided if not for the college, but the college gives the Democrats a clearcut, if not overwhelming, advantage.

#47--Windom (Cottonwood County, est. pop. 4,500). This southwestern Minnesota farm community is located right near the source of the Des Moines River, which obviously swells into a massive body of water as it flows south into Iowa. The community is very Norman Rockwell-esque in a number of ways, but is lucky enough to have a Toro lawn mower plant with a strong union that gives the community a healthy Democratic advantage come election season. This is one of the original towns where my dad used to do vinyl repair work at car lots when I was a boy in the early 1990s, so it's also a sentimental favorite.

#46--Garrison (Crow Wing County, est. pop. 150). I typically have little time for overtly commercialized towns feeding off the fishing and tourism trade, but I nonetheless have a soft spot for Garrison, a tiny burg on the west side of Lake Mille Lacs, one of the largest lakes in Minnesota, located in the east-central region of the state about an hour north of the Twin Cities. At the age of 14, I was thoroughly impressed riding through Garrison for the first time and seeing a Dairy Queen and a McDonald's in a town of 150 people (I believe Garrison remains the smallest city in the world with a McDonald's), but its that vantage point of Lake Mille Lacs that really wins me over today. And Garrison is a Democratic stronghold as well, which may be the product of spillover from the nearby Mille Lacs Indian Reservation or may simply be a progressive-minded upper-income white community.

#45--Virginia (St. Louis County, est. pop. 9,000). Northeastern Minnesota's Iron Range is one of the most fascinating regions of the Minnesota, in terms of the natural beauty of its surroundings, the unique blend of central and Eastern European ethnic groups that settled there, and the gritty blue-collar culture of the hardscrabble mining towns. Virginia is, for all intents and purposes, the epicenter of the Iron Range, with aging two-story homes in every corner of town that look like they're straight out of oldest and most rugged neighborhoods of Minneapolis. The toughness of the town contrasts impressively with the amazing natural beauty of the woods surrounding the city. The Iron Range is Minnesota's most renowned DFL stronghold, and Virginia is certainly part of that, going Democrat by margins of close to 3-1 in most elections.

#44--Effie (Itasca County, est. pop. 125). There are very few Minnesota towns as remote as Effie. Geographically, it's located about an hour northwest of the Iron Range in an isolated stretch of forest area almost completely untouched by civilization. Two of the most exciting roads I've navigated in my decades of Minnesota road-tripping are state highway 38 heading north to Effie and state highway 1 heading west to Effie. Both feature a roller coaster of windy twists and 10 mph hairpin turns through the north woods. These roads are a blast in nice weather on open roads, but if the weather turns ugly or another car catches up to you from behind and starts tailgaiting, the highways instantly go from being exciting to huge sources of stress. Once you get to the town of Effie, there's very little to do, but it's hard to miss the giant mosquito landmark in the park in town, on display to remind you of the area's most abundant "wildlife". I imagine a sense of humor is an absolute must for anyone who lives in a place as remote as Effie! Politically, Effie is full of conservative Democrats who can usually be counted on to tow the party line, but probably have more in common with the Democrats of West Virginia than the Democrats of Minneapolis.

43. Ulen (Clay County, est. pop. 500). This small farm town in the southern Red River Valley near Fargo-Moorhead area is a sentimental favorite more than anything. As a boy in the late 80s, I would travel with my grandparents when they went to visit my aunt (and my favorite cousin) who live in far northwestern Minnesota. I was getting hungry and requested we stop off for a bite to eat at the next town, which happened to be Ulen. A localized version of a Tastee-Freeze was the only option, and I ordered a hot dog and a chocolate shake. These small-town Dairy Queen ripoffs were all the rage in the Red River Valley back in the late 1980s. It seems like the fad has died, but I still have a soft spot for this farm town because of it. Politically, Ulen is among the most reliably DFL farm towns in a county that leans Democratic, but can't always be relied upon.

42. St. Peter (Nicollet County, est. pop. 10,000). The small liberal arts school Gustavus Adolphus is located in this scenic river town on the banks of the Minnesota River. The town always had an impressive look and a progressive feel due to the college, but suffered a major setback when a huge tornado busted through town in 1998, wiping out most of the trees dotting the Gustavus campus and severely damaging some of the oldest and most architecturally impressive homes in town. St. Peter bounced back quickly though and its comeback was evident as early as the 2000 census when the population had grown slightly despite the tornado damage just two years earlier. This was another town I connected with at a young age since my dad did alot of vinyl repair work here in the early 1990s. Politically, the college culture makes the city of St. Peter an island of progressivism in a conservative pocket of southern Minnesota settled by German immigrants.

41. Crookston (Polk County, est. 8,000). Yet another college town, Crookston is the home of one of the four branches of the University of Minnesota, and by far the most isolated campus of the four, nearly six hours northwest of the Twin Cities. Crookston is better known for the being "the heart of the Red River Valley", an island of civilization amidst the impossibly flat landscape where wheat and sugar beets are grown only about a half hour east of Grand Forks, North Dakota. A sugar beet processing plant is one of the main employers in town, which lends itself to the contrasts of the city. Unlike most Red River Valley towns, Crookston looks old, gritty, and blue-collar, much like my home town of Albert Lea, and has a large population of Hispanics who work at the sugar beet plant. Even the college doesn't dilute the cultural conservatism so prominent in the Red River Valley. Like most of the region, Crookston is a DFL stronghold in state and local elections, but they had an inexplicable weakness for George Bush. Gore did win by a scant one-point margin in 2000, but Bush managed to beat Kerry by the same one-point margin two years later, despite the differences with Bush on trade that would have negatively affected the sugar cartel. Politics aside, its hard not to connect to a town so small with so many thematic contrasts.


That does it for the first 10 communities. I'll expand my list in the days ahead with profiles of the remaining 40 towns.

It's Obama! Or Is It?

Everything we hear suggests that Barack Obama is verifiably the Democratic nominee for President. I am grateful that he beat the increasingly noxious Hillary Clinton, so I at least have the option of voting for an unelectable Democrat that I respect and admire, but am still not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he will be our nominee. Why not? "The videotape".

Starting last week, ominous rumors were floating around the right-wing blogosphere that a videotape existed that would be the equivalent of a neutron bomb to the Obama campaign. Specifically, the tape was/is rumored to show Michelle Obama making fiery racist comments to a black crowd at a Chicago event in close company with Louis Farrakhan. At first, I didn't put much stock in this chatter, until Fox News' token Democrat Bob Beckel made an eerie prognostication on Tuesday morning of his concern that "a major shoe could drop" in the days ahead involving Michelle Obama. He wouldn't elaborate, but it sent a chill down my spine because Beckel, a long-time Obama supporter, would have no motive in advancing this storyline unless he knew something most people didn't, most likely that Fox News is sitting on the tape and plan to have Sean Hannity release it as "an October surprise". Could it be that Beckel was just trying to get ahead of this story by leaking it in advance?

For what it's worth, I think the tape exists. Michelle Obama is a total loose cannon. The very first exposure I had to her was last year on "60 Minutes", and my first impression was, "That's one angry woman!" I sure hope it doesn't exist, but if it does, I hope it leaks before the August convention. A candidate switcheroo would most likely be necessary if this tape was unveiled as the latest in the drip-drip of scandals haunting the Obama campaign. If the tape exists and we don't see it until October, McCain will win 45 states.