Early Richfield
While it is true that Richfield ranks as the state’s preeminent suburban postwar boomtown, there is much more to the community's story than houses. Its citizens trace the origins of their town to the 1820s and some small settlements, Minnesota’s first “suburbs,” around Fort Snelling.
By the late 1830s, the fortress served as a destination for newcomers—lumbermen, missionaries, farmers, traders and travelers—migrating to the borderlands people were now calling “Minisota.”
Fort Snelling’s garrison made up the bulk of the area’s population, along with Henry Sibley and Alexander Faribault’s seventy-five person American Fur Company operation. The federal government licensed American Fur to locate its base at Mendota, across the Mississippi from the fort. Meanwhile, small settlements of traders, farmers, missionaries and refugees began to develop outside the walls of the fort, some with permission, some without. These residents built communities on land that would become known as Richfield.
Read more about this topic: History Of Richfield, Minnesota
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