Hinckley, Minnesota Website

Hinckley, Minnesota is located halfway between the Twin Cities and Duluth, just  off I-35. Our location makes Hinckley a great place to stop for a quick rest as well as a convenient getaway for travelers from the Twin Cities, Duluth and surrounding areas.

Imagine, a canopy of White Pine trees so thick that the blue sky and sunshine were hard to see. This is what the first White settlers saw as they moved into the area around Hinckley.

Of course, they were not the first to know the area. The Native Americans had been here for a long time and knew the wealth of the area. They had been living near the St. Croix since around 1854, when the Ojibwe, who had been living in the northeastern part of the state agreed to give up a vast tract of land bordering Lake Superior. Reservations were created in both Minnesota and Wisconsin to accommodate those displaced Indians but the earlier Natives who had been living along the St. Croix since the early 1800's did not want to desert their ancestral homes for the confinements of reservation life at Lac Court Oreilles near Hayward, Wisconsin. By their refusal, they forfeited any chance of receiving land allotments and became the "Lost Tribe" of the St. Croix. Today, descendants of those early people still live in the Lake Lena Indian Reservation, and are part of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Because of the large stand of white pine trees in the Hinckley area, loggers began their migration into the area and the first sawmill was built in 1869. The railroads were also invading the area and in the same year, 1869, the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad pushed its railroad building operation into Hinckley, and two miles north, and finally, into Duluth in 1870.

With the coming of the railroad, the lumbering industry boomed and for twenty years, Hinckley was a growing, prosperous town with a population of 1,500.

On September 1, 1894, all of that changed.... READ MORE HERE