St. Cloud or Saint Cloud (; ) is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 68,881 at the 2020 census, making it Minnesota's 12th-most populous city. St. Cloud is the county seat of Stearns County, though it also extends into Benton and Sherburne counties. The city lies along the Mississippi River and is named after Saint-Cloud, a suburb of Paris named for the 6th-century monk Clodoald.
The St. Cloud metropolitan area has an estimated 206,000 residents and is Minnesota's fifth-largest metropolitan statistical area. St. Cloud is northwest of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–St. Paul along Interstate 94, U.S. Highway 52 (conjoined with I-94), U.S. Highway 10, Minnesota State Highway 15, and Minnesota State Highway 23. The St. Cloud metropolitan area is included in the greater Minneapolis–St. Paul combined statistical area.
St. Cloud is home to St. Cloud State University, Minnesota's third-largest public university, located near the Beaver Islands, a group of around 30 undeveloped islands in the Mississippi River. These islands, part of a 12-mile designated wild and scenic river segment, attract kayakers and canoeists.Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, "Mississippi River", "St. Cloud to Anoka" National Weather Service, Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, Mississippi River at St. Cloud The city also owns and operates Minnesota's largest municipally managed hydroelectric dam on the Mississippi River, which generates nearly nine megawatts of electricity, about 10% of the total output from the state's 11 hydroelectric dams on the river.City of St. Cloud, Public Utilities,Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) "Operating Hydropower Sites In Minnesota"John Weeks, John Weeks, The Bridges and Structures of the Mississippi River Headwaters , A Detailed Look At The Bridges, Dams And Other Structures On The Mississippi River In The Headwaters Region From Lake Itasca To Minneapolis, November 2007.
History
What is now the St. Cloud area was occupied by various Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Voyageurs and coureurs des bois from New France first encountered the Ojibwe and Dakota through the highly profitable North American fur trade with local Native American peoples.New historic marker at Riverside Park honors Dakota and Ojibwe, Jenny Berg, SCTimes, June 28, 2019William Bell Mitchell (1915), History of Stearns County; Volume I, H.R. Cooper & Co. Chicago. Pages 26-35.
The Minnesota Territory was organized in 1849. The St. Cloud area opened up to homesteading after the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed with the Dakota people in 1851.William Bell Mitchell (1915), History of Stearns County; Volume I, H.R. Cooper & Co. Chicago. Pages 35-38. John L. Wilson, a Yankee homesteader from Columbia, Maine, with French Huguenot ancestry and an interest in Napoleon, named the settlement St. Cloud after Saint-Cloud, the Paris suburb where Napoleon had his favorite palace.How did St. Cloud get its name? It's a strange story, An inside joke in the 1850s had a lasting impact on central Minnesota's hub, Jenny Berg, Curious Minnesota, Star Tribune, July 23, 2021.William Bell Mitchell (1915), History of Stearns County; Volume I, H.R. Cooper & Co. Chicago. Pages 645-646.
St. Cloud was a waystation on the Middle and Woods branches of the Red River Trails used by Métis traders between the Canada–U.S. border at Pembina, North Dakota, and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The cart trains often consisted of hundreds of oxcarts known as Red River carts. The Métis, bringing furs to trade for supplies to take back to their rural settlements, camped west of the city and crossed the Mississippi in St. Cloud or just to the north in Sauk Rapids.
The City of St. Cloud was incorporated in 1856. It developed from three distinct settlements, known as Upper Town, Middle Town, and Lower Town, that European-American settlers established starting in 1853."3 Towns Into 1 City, A Narrative Record of Significant Factors in The Story Of St. Cloud Minnesota." Remnants of the deep ravines that separated the three are still visible today. Middle Town was settled primarily by German Catholic immigrants and migrants from eastern states, who were recruited to the region by Father Francis Xavier Pierz, a Catholic priest who also ministered as a missionary to Native Americans.
Lower Town was founded by settlers from the Northern Tier of New England and the mid-Atlantic states, including former residents of upstate New York.The St Cloud Area Bicentennial Commission, "3 Towns Into 1 City, A Narrative Record of Significant Factors in THE STORY OF ST. CLOUD MINNESOTA", Compiled and Narrated by John J Dominik, Jr, Editor Ed L Stockinger, page 3. Its Protestant settlers opposed slavery. St. Cloud City website Document Center Upper Town, or Arcadia, was plotted by General Sylvanus Lowry, a slaveholder and trader from Kentucky who brought slaves with him, although Minnesota was organized as a free territory."Sylvanus Lowry" , Minnesota Legislators Past and Present, accessed July 4, 2012 He served on the territorial council from 1852 to 1853 and was elected president of the newly formed town council in 1856, serving for one year (the office of mayor did not yet exist).https://www.ci.stcloud.mn.us/DocumentCenter/View/685/Newly-Elected-Orientation?bidId= Newly Elected Orientation, section (9) History of the City
Jane Grey Swisshelm, an abolitionist newspaper editor who had migrated from Pittsburgh, repeatedly attacked Lowry in print. At one point Lowry organized a "Committee of Vigilance" that broke into Swisshelm's newspaper office and removed her press, throwing it into the Mississippi River. Lowry started a rival paper, The Union.Ambar Espinoza, "St. Cloud professor unearths history of slavery in Minnesota" , Minnesota Public Radio, May 7, 2010, accessed July 4, 2012 In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott that slaves could not file freedom suits and found the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, so the territory's prohibition against slavery became unenforceable. Nearly all Southerners left the St. Cloud area when the Civil War broke out, taking their slaves with them. The number of slaves in the community was estimated in single digits at the 1860 census.Lincoln Mullen,These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States, Smithsonian Magazine, May 15, 2014. Lowry died in the city in 1865.Our Gohman Story: The First and Second Generations p. 173
Many young men from St. Cloud and the surrounding area served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.William Bell Mitchell (1915), History of Stearns County; Volume I, H.R. Cooper & Co. Chicago. Pages 628-635. After it ended, many local Civil War veterans remained heavily involved in St. Cloud's chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, and raised money for the building of a statue in memory of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln that still stands near the St. Germain Street bridge.William Bell Mitchell (1915), History of Stearns County; Volume II, H.R. Cooper & Co. Chicago. Pages 1465-1467. Beginning in 1864, Stephen Miller served a two-year term as Minnesota governor, the only citizen of St. Cloud ever to hold the office. Miller was a "Pennsylvania German businessman", lawyer, writer, active abolitionist, and personal friend of Alexander Ramsey. He was on the state's Republican electoral ticket with Lincoln in 1860.John J. Dominik Jr., "Three Towns Into One City", St. Cloud, Minnesota: St Cloud Area Bicentennial Commission, 1976, p. 13
Steamboats regularly docked at St. Cloud as part of the fur trade and other commerce, although river levels were not reliable. This ended with the construction of the Coon Rapids Dam in 1912–14. Granite quarries have operated in the area since the 1880s, giving St. Cloud its nickname, "The Granite City". In 1917, Samuel Pandolfo started the Pan Motor Company in St. Cloud. He claimed his Pan-Cars would make St. Cloud the new Detroit, but the company failed at a time when resources were directed toward the World War I effort. He was later convicted and imprisoned for attempting to defraud investors.
According to documents at the Stearns History Museum, more than 2,000 residents from the heavily German-American St. Cloud area served in the U.S. military against their ancestral homeland during World War I.Dunn, Mary Irene, "Stearns County in the World War, An Honor Roll of the Men and Women of this Community Who Served Their Country in the Period from 6 April 1917 to 11 November 1918, Compiled From State and National U.S. Military Records",manuscript dated 1932, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. On January 26, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson wrote a letter to Bishop Joseph Francis Busch thanking him for his support of the war effort.Woodrow Wilson, photocopy of letter on White House stationery with note "Original in Chancery Archive vault", to Rt. Rev. J. F. Busch, Bishop of St. Cloud, January 26, 1918. Stearns History Museum
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of ; is land and is water.
The city developed on both sides of the Mississippi River. Part of the Sauk River runs along its northern edge.
Just south of downtown is the 7-acre, 35-feet-deep Lake George.LakeFinder, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. In 2021, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) credited decade-long city investments in stormwater filtration with reducing Lake George's phosphorus levels well below the state standard. It called Lake George one of three "success stories" in the state, and planned to remove it from a list of impaired waters.Malakowsky, "Minnesota adds 305 streams and lakes to its impaired waters list, including new PFAS water in Greater Minnesota", Minnesota Pollution Control Agency November 8, 2021
Granite bedrock quarried in the area has been estimated to be 1.7 billion years old and was exposed after several miles of rock above it eroded. The city lies on a band of modern Mississippi river sediment surrounded by land scoured several times by Wisconsin Age glaciers beginning about 35,000 years ago, ending with the Lake Superior St. Croix lobe. The later Des Moines lobe created glacial moraines and drift south and east of the city.Richard W. Ojakangas, Roadside Geology of Minnesota, 2009, glacial history of Minnesota, page 26, "Glacial geology of central Minnesota - modified from Hobbs and Goebel,1982, page 196, granite dating, page 204
Climate
St. Cloud lies in the warm summer humid continental climate zone (Köppen climate classification: Dfb), with warm summers and cold winters with moderate to heavy snowfall. The monthly normal daily mean temperature ranges from in January to in July. The record high temperature is . The record low temperature is .
Demographics
St. Cloud has been a significant destination for immigrants throughout its history, beginning with German settlers in the late 19th century, followed by waves of Polish, Irish, and other European immigrants in the early 20th century. Since the late 20th and early 21st century, new residents of the city have predominantly been from Africa, particularly Somalia. Unofficial estimates suggest that the number of Somalis in St. Cloud and the surrounding cities could be as high as 25,000, with approximately half of these having moved to the city between 2009 and 2013. About 15% of the local school district is Somali and many Somalis are enrolled in high schools, colleges, and universities as of 2023. Homeownership among St. Cloud's Somali community is considerably lower than other populations.