Welcome to fascinating Hinckley, Minnesota. Located halfway between the Twin Cities and Duluth, many travelers know of Hinckley as the home of Tobies Restaurant and the Grand Casino. Hinckley is much more than just a popular pit stop, it is a town with a rich and unique story. Hinckley is located on the physical border between the agricultural Heartland and the northern Boreal Forest as well as on the man-made border between the Twin Cities’ exurban commutershed and Minnesota’s rural recreation area. First inhabited by the Ojibwe Indians, Hinckley’s population began to grow rapidly after railroads were built through the area in the late nineteenth century. Hinckley was developing into a prosperous regional center with an economy based around a lumber mill when a massive firestorm leveled the town on September 1, 1894. Over 400 people died in the blaze—nearly a third of the town’s population at the time—in what many consider to be the country’s second largest forest fire. The town was rebuilt and is today undergoing another population boom as a commuter town and casino-based entertainment center. Throughout its rich history, Hinckley has continually demonstrated the importance of site, characteristics of a particular location, and situation, how a location interacts with other locations, in bringing urban development to once rural locations. Different patterns of urban development in different transportation eras and the influence of physical geography are both visible in Hinckley’s landscape.
This website, sponsored by the Minnesota Alliance for Geographic Education, seeks to explore how site and situation have twice combined to bring urban development and urban functions to Hinckley’s non-urban location. Once railroads connecting the Twin Cities to Duluth passed through Hinckley, the town’s situation improved to allow people to exploit the area’s timber resources. The railroad era town that quickly grew up around the two railroad depots offered services that were not previously available to the rural population such as shops, hotels, schools, and churches. Today Hinckley is undergoing a similar boom based around a new site characteristic—legal on-reservation gambling—that draws people and development to the area. Big name entertainers, popular restaurants, exciting golf courses, and large hotels are now common around Hinckley. Longtime residents are unsure of how this development will impact their town and longstanding small town way of life and are split on whether the casino has benefited or hurt the town.
The rich story of Hinckley is told on the following webpages. Have fun exploring Minnesota’s fascinating geography!
Click here to go to the next section: The Railroad Era in Hinckley.
