Almelund is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Amador Township, Chisago County,

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

, United States. The community is located east of North Branch at the junction of State Highway 95 ( MN 95) and Chisago County Road 12 (Park Trail). Nearby places include North Branch, Center City,

Sunrise Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning, at the start of the Sun path. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon. Terminology Although the S ...

, and Taylors Falls. ZIP codes 55012 (Center City), 55056 (North Branch), and 55084 (Taylors Falls) all intersect near Almelund. Almelund is located north-northeast of

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

. The community's population is 2,945 people (as of 2018).

History

The first European visitors to the area were French traders, who bought furs from the resident

Ojibwa The Ojibwe (; syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the northern plains, extending into the subarctic and thro ...

Indians in the 17th century. Yankee settlers moved to Amador Township in the 1850s living along the St. Croix River, which also had the first post office. Dr. Carmi P. Garlick platted the village as Amador (in Minnesota) in conjunction with the village of Sebetana (in Wisconsin) across the river from each other. He took the name Amador from Amador County, California where he had panned for gold. In 1857 he built a saw mill on the St. Croix River. Swedish immigrants arrived in the township in the 1870s to buy farm land. The village of Almelund was founded in 1887 by Swedish Immigrant John Almquist who heard Swedish settlers were building a Lutheran church in this area. Almquist knew these settlers would need supplies, built a general store and operated it there for thirty years until it burned down in 1911. The name Almelund is

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

for

elm Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the genus ''Ulmus'' in the family Ulmaceae. They are distributed over most of the Northern Hemisphere, inhabiting the temperate and tropical- montane regions of North America and Eurasia, ...

grove. The first wood-frame one-room school was built in 1890 and is today used as the Amador Town Hall. A two-room brick school was built in 1910 which is now the Amador Heritage Center, a museum which also includes three log cabins, a log barn and log granary. Still in a prominent place at the center of town is Immanuel Lutheran Church. Originally known as the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Emmanuel Church, the current building was built in 1926.

Community

Almelund is bordered on the north and east by the St. Croix River and Wild River State Park. The township formerly was predominantly farmland with farm families raising corn, soybeans, dairy and beef cattle, and feed for those cattle. Many were descendants of the original Swedish immigrants. Today most of the township is no longer as farm-oriented—many local residents commute to the Twin Cities area for employment. The area is also known for its water sports and other outdoor recreation. Almelund is three miles south of Wild River State Park and west of Wild Mountain Recreation Area. Almelund is also well known throughout east–central Minnesota for hosting the annual Threshing Show. It is a sixty-year-old celebration of vintage

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a Trailer (vehicle), trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or constructio ...

s, old farm equipment and traditional

threshing Threshing or thrashing is the process of loosening the edible part of grain (or other crop) from the straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain. History of ...

methods. Almelund's slogan is "The Busiest Small Town in Minnesota".

References

External links

Amador Township

Almelund, Minnesota
at the

Minnesota Historical Society The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a Nonprofit organization, nonprofit Educational institution, educational and cultural institution dedicated to preserving the history of the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was founded by the Minnesota Terr ...

.
TopoQuest map of Almelund
{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Chisago County, Minnesota Unincorporated communities in Minnesota