Brainerd

Sister cities

• Leksand Municipality

History

The area that is now Brainerd was formerly Ojibwe territory. Brainerd was first seen by European settlers on Christmas Day in 1805, when Zebulon Pike stopped there while searching for the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Crow Wing Village, a fur and logging community near Fort Ripley, brought settlers to the area in the mid-19th century. In those early years, the relationship between the settlers and the Native Americans was fraught. The most famous example of this tenuous relationship was the "Blueberry War" of 1872. Two Ojibwe were accused of murdering a missing girl. After they were arrested and jailed, a mob overpowered the sheriff's officers, dragged the suspects from the jail and lynched them. Shortly after these events, a group of Ojibwe approached the town, and troops from Fort Ripley were called in to prevent what residents assumed was a reprisal attack for the lynchings. As it turned out, the Ojibwe only wanted to sell blueberries and the settlers avoided a bloody misunderstanding. The guilt of the two Ojibwe was never proven. Brainerd was the idea of Northern Pacific railroad president John Gregory Smith, who in 1870 named the township after his wife, Anne Eliza Brainerd Smith, and father-in-law, Lawrence Brainerd. On January 11, 1876, the state legislature revoked Brainerd's charter for six years, in reaction to the election of local handyman Thomas Lanihan as mayor instead of Judge C.B. Sleeper. Brainerd functioned as a township in the interim. In 1881, the railroad, and with it the town, expanded. Lumber and paper, as well as agriculture in general, were important early industries, but for many decades Brainerd remained a railroad town: in the 1920s roughly 90% of Brainerd residents were dependent on the railroad. Participation in the nationwide…

Geography

Brainerd is just north of Minnesota's geographical center, in a relatively hilly terminal moraine area created by the Superior Lobe of the Labradorian ice sheet. The town occupies land on both sides of the Mississippi River, though its older parts are almost all to the east. Though the city itself has relatively few lakes, there are over 460 lakes within of Brainerd, mostly to the north. For this reason, Crow Wing County and parts of the adjoining counties are often collectively called the Brainerd Lakes Area despite most of the lakes existing closer to Nisswa. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and is water. Brainerd has been assigned ZIP code 56401 by the USPS. Brainerd has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb) with vast seasonal differences. Summers are warm, and occasionally hot, with high humidity, whereas winters are often severely cold. The Burlington Northern (Brainerd/Baxter) United States Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site is on the boundary between Brainerd and Baxter. The site served as a Burlington Northern Railroad tie treatment plant from 1907 to 1985. During that time, wastewater generated from the wood-treating process was sent to two shallow, unlined ponds. This created a toxic sludge that contaminated both the underlying soils and the groundwater with creosote and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  3,368
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  2,945
• White-breasted Nuthatch

  Sitta carolinensis Latham, 1790 · Aves
  2,634
• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  2,358
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  1,907
• Downy Woodpecker

  Dryobates pubescens (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  1,859
• American Goldfinch

  Spinus tristis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  1,713
• Hairy Woodpecker

  Leuconotopicus villosus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  1,475