Austin

History

Fertile land, trapping, and ease of access brought first trappers and then the early pioneers to this region. The rich gameland attracted Austin Nichols, a trapper who built the first log cabin in 1853. At that time there were "about twenty families in the area." In 1856 the settlement adopted the name "Austin", in honor of its first settler. That year the first hotel opened to travelers and the first physician, Dr. Ormanzo Allen, moved to town. The first newspaper, the Mower County Mirror, was started in 1858. which eventually grew into today's Fortune 500 company, Hormel Foods. By 1896 area doctors, with the help of local Lutheran congregations, formed the Austin Hospital Association, later becoming St. Olaf Hospital, and (since 1995) part of Mayo Clinic Health System. In 1897 Charles Boostrom opened Austin's first college, the Southern Minnesota Normal College and Austin School of Commerce. It closed in 1925, and the city was without an institution of higher education until Austin Junior College opened in 1940. In 1964 it became part of the State College and University System and is now Riverland Community College. In 1913 the Minnesota Legislature made a parcel of land into Horace Austin State Park. At the time, the land was "one of the beauty spots of Southern Minnesota, but of late years has not been cared for and in places the banks have been disfigured by dumping along the shore of the stream," according to the bill's author, Senator Charles F. Cook. The park was converted to a state "scenic wayside" in 1937, then transferred to city ownership in 1949. In the 1930s Austin Acres was built with funding from the Subsistence Homesteads Division of the Department of the Interior. The Austin Parks Board was formed in the 1940s to oversee the growing number of…

Geography

Austin is in western Mower County in southeastern Minnesota. It is east of Albert Lea, southwest of Rochester, south of Minneapolis, and north of the Iowa border. The city is bordered to the south by Austin Township, to the east by Windom and Red Rock townships, and to the north by Lansing Township and the city of Mapleview. Austin is bordered to the west by Oakland Township in Freeborn County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Austin has a total area of , of which are land and , or 0.79%, are water. Below is a table of average high and low temperatures in Austin.

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  1,148
• Canada Goose (canadensis Group)

  Branta canadensis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  1,049
• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  900
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  878
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  854
• Red-winged Blackbird

  Agelaius phoeniceus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  845
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  729
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  681