Around the middle of the 19th century, on the former land of Morris P. Dennison the small village of Dennison, aptly named in his honor, began to be settled. Soon thereafter, the population of the village grew relatively quickly, in part due to its function as a railway village. In 1884, Minnesota & Northwestern constructed a line through the budding village, which was then sold to the Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City, and subsequently passed into the hands of the Chicago Great Western. As a railroad village, Dennison certainly developed, but unlike the surrounding towns of Northfield and Faribault, it remained small and relatively insignificant. In part, this lack of major growth has to do with the smaller size of the town at the time the railroad arrived and with the fact that Dennison lacked a major water feature, be that a river or lake, in close proximity to the town.

Nevertheless, by the turn of the century, Dennison was a fairly sized village with nearly 200 people, overwhelmingly of Scandinavian descent. The town boasted a school, three general stores, a hardware store, a bank, barbershop, two blacksmiths, one meat market, a farmer’s elevator, a milk pasteurization plant, a Methodist church, and a lumber yard. Furthermore, the town was also home to a post office with two rural routes.

During the 20th century, Dennison was also home to Albert H. Quie, the state of Minnesota’s thirty-fifth governor from 1979-1983. Born on a farm outside Dennison, Quie attended St. Olaf college and graduated with a degree in political science. Thirty years after his tenure as governor ended, Quie was honored in his hometown of Dennison. In 2006, Congress voted designate the post office on Goodhue Avenue in Dennison the ‘Albert H. Quie Post Office.’ Though a relatively small gesture, the post office shall forever bear his name.

 

Above, this map shows a section of the “Maple Leaf Route” of the Chicago Great Western Railway which stretched from Minneapolis to St. Louis to Chicago. Dennison (as well as Stanton) was a stop along this route around the turn of the century, but rail consolidation in the middle of the 20th century left the two towns without a railroad.

• 

• 

• 

• 

•